by Shelley Day
Gareth turns the lights off and leaves the office. He forgets to leave any note for Geoff. He also heads straight home and forgets to stop to get his beers, his chocolate and his Chinese carry-out.
Chapter Sixteen
Frank pulls off his wet clothes and shoes and wraps himself in some stinking old towels and a moth-eaten tartan blanket that smells of rat piss. Feeling around in the dark in the cupboard under the stairs – he’s even past caring about that stinking cupboard – he pulls out enough bits and pieces to make a fire before jamming the door shut with a chair under the handle. He’ll have to get his clothes dry before he can get out of this hellhole.
Frank has determined that the most crucial thing is to get rid of the evidence – that has to be the first thing. He’s thinking more clearly now. Stella, Ruby, Hedy – they can all talk till they’re hoarse, to the press, to the polis even, there’s nothing anyone can do to Frank if there’s no bloody body. So the first thing is to sort that, as soon as his clothes are dry. Then Stella, Ruby, Hedy, in no particular order. All that’s belt and braces. The whole thing suddenly looks pretty straightforward, albeit he’s a bit on the clock and he’ll have to get his kit a bit dry. Frank doesn’t want to draw undue attention to himself, just in case.
Frank gets the fire started then goes out the back to the coalhouse. Using the monkey wrench, he smashes open the padlock and drags open the door. Piles of old newspapers, a heap of old coal sacks, some cardboard boxes and some miserable crumbs of coal is all he finds. He scrapes up what he can of the slack with a shovel and tosses it onto the fire. It hisses. He’s afraid for a moment that it has killed the flame altogether, which would be just his luck, but in a little while puffs of thick brown smoke break through and make their way up the chimney. Frank feels strangely cheered. He gets some of the old coal sacks and throws them on for good measure.
Now for his soaking clothes. He wrings them out onto the scullery floor. He has to leave the back door open so the flood of water from the broken pipe can pour over the back step and out into the yard. There’s nothing he can do about that. He drapes his wet things over the old wooden clothes-horse and arranges it in front of the fire. Frank Fanshaw won’t be going anywhere in a hurry, not before he’s got this little lot dried off. Good job he had the foresight to get a couple of beers in.
Frank tiptoes barefoot through the flood in the scullery and fetches the axe from the coalhouse. He uses it to chop with heavy strikes through the chairs. Bit by bit, while his things are drying, he chops up the furniture and feeds it onto the fire. Watching it go up in flames, in the warmth of the fire, Frank begins to feel almost cheerful. He’s got water now, and he’s got a plan. Frank’s clothes are still pretty damp, but he’ll have to put them on. He hasn’t got much choice, as a matter of fact. He’ll have to go and get fags because that bloody Stella’s nicked off with his and he’s nearly finished the new packet.
The more Frank thinks about it, the more it seems likely that Stella isn’t coming back to the boarding house. If Frank wants her, he’s going to have to get out there and find her. Fuck knows where the crafty little bitch has got to. The trouble with Stella Moon is that you can never tell what she’s thinking. She doesn’t even know herself, half the time.
A touch of desperation is creeping into Frank’s thoughts. He’s finding it hard to keep his thoughts from spiralling, to keep the panic at bay. One minute he’s OK and the next he’s hearing things: sirens, footsteps in the hall, a key in the front door, something rattling at the back door. And Frank knows Stella could be anywhere: at this very minute, she could be talking to reporters or, God forbid, the police. This very instant she could be telling them everything, for all Frank knows. She’ll be passing the buck, saying the whole baby thing was his doing from start to finish, the sly little bitch. Frank wouldn’t put anything past her. Tomorrow he could wake up to find his name blazed across the headlines once more. He couldn’t live through that again. He’d have to top himself.
In an instant Frank decides it’s best to get away from the boarding house, in case Stella does talk. It’s not a good idea for Frank to be found on this particular doorstep, or even at the Beach Hut, for that matter. Especially at the Beach Hut, now he comes to think of it.
But he has to go to the Beach Hut. If he can get the baby’s body dug up, he can dispose of it properly, get rid of that important evidence – that at least will go part of the way to making sure they can’t lay that particular crime on Frank Fanshaw. He’ll go to the Beach Hut without Stella. He’s got no choice. If he’s in luck, he could find her there. Then the next step will be to track down old Ma Willoughby. Possibly catch up with Stella at that point.
Panic’s setting in, causing Frank’s thoughts to go careering all over the place. He needs to calm down, think logical. What if the polis are already after him? The crone next door knows he’s been here, he’s seen her curtains twitching. And the dentist, Mr Cohen. Frank’s situation suddenly strikes him as urgent, possibly dangerous. Why hadn’t he realised that before now? He’s got to get away. He mustn’t waste another second.
Frank pulls on the damp clothes and looks around to make sure he hasn’t left anything. His fingerprints will be everywhere, if the polis do come. He rips a bit off the curtain and rushes round wiping door handles and surfaces, even the handle on the toilet chain. He stuffs the monkey wrench, the axe and the broken hammer into his duffle bag, runs upstairs again and grabs his bedside clock and his glasses and stuffs those into the bag as well. He pulls off the bedding and bundles it into the fire, holds it in with the poker till it goes up in flames. Then he’s at the front door, ready to leave. He looks back along the hall, checks his pocket for the key and hears the water still pouring out in the scullery. Frank slams the front door shut: there’s nowt he can do about that water. He should be going to sign on – no way is that a good idea at this point in time. If they’re looking for him, the Social is the first place they’ll go. He can’t risk it. He’d better get away.
A car pulls up at the curb just as Frank is climbing over the front gate, causing all his innards to lurch. The dentist from across the way gets out. Frank puts his head down and starts to hurry away, but he’s too late, Mr Cohen has spotted him.
‘Mr Fanshaw!’ the dentist shouts. ‘Frank Fanshaw!’ Mr Cohen comes rushing down the pavement after Frank and catches hold of his sleeve. ‘Ah I thought it was you,’ he says, puffing a bit.
‘Ah, morning, Mr Cohen,’ Frank says, ‘afraid I’m in a bit of a hurry…’
‘Won’t take a minute, my man,’ the dentist says. ‘Only you were asking about old Mrs Willoughby. Well, I made a few inquiries on your behalf. Seems she was taken into a nursing home way back in 1970 or thereabouts. The goings on, you know, with the granddaughter… Well, you can imagine, they’d be bound to take their toll on an old lady’s health…’
‘You mean she’s still alive and kicking?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that…’ Mr Cohen says. ‘I’m talking about after the court case. When the granddaughter went to prison. It was after that, apparently, they took her away.’
‘Where did they take her?’ Frank interrupts again.
‘Somewhere down south. Brighton, I think.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Fred Greenbank. Family doctor. Bumped into him at the Rotary. It was him that brought it up, actually, or I wouldn’t have thought. He was saying the grand-daughter would be due to come out round about now.’
‘Well, I suppose she would be, yes,’ says Frank. ‘Whereabouts in Brighton?’
‘Now, I don’t know that. I could ask old Greenbank...’
‘Oh, no need to put yourself to that trouble.’
‘No trouble, no trouble at all. What is it you want to know? The address of the nursing home?’
‘No, really, it’s alright. I just wondered what was happening to the house, that’s all. It can’t stay like this fore
ver.’ Frank gestures back at the boarding house. ‘Can’t be very nice for you, having a place so close by going to rack and ruin.’
‘Well, no. As I say, it was way back in 1970 Mrs Willoughby went away. The old dear could have passed away between then and now, I suppose.’
‘Would old Greenbank know?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. She’ll have been off his books long since.’
‘If she’d died, you’d think they’d have sold the house, under the will, whatever.’
The dentist shrugs and picks up his big black briefcase. ‘Well, I’d better be off,’ he says. ‘Duty calls.’ The dentist seemed to study Frank for a moment before looking at his watch, touching the brim of his hat and rushing off into the surgery. ‘I’ll say goodbye, then, Mr Fanshaw.’
The dentist gone, Frank looks down at himself. He looks a mess, and it’s pretty obvious his clothes are more than a little on the damp side. Mr Cohen will be wondering what the hell, but Frank can’t afford time to be thinking like that. He’s got a lot to do, and the clock is ticking.
Brighton, eh? Maybe Frank will head off down to Brighton, have himself a little holiday, once he’s been to the Beach Hut and got that business dealt with. First things first. He’s got a bit of money put away in the Post Office. He’ll get it out and keep it in cash, just in case. If old Ma Willoughby’s still alive, it should be easy enough to find her down in Brighton. And if Frank can track her down, so can Stella. Get on with it, Frank. Get your wits about you.
Chapter Seventeen
Stella does not want to be alone in the boarding house tonight. The place gives her the creeps. She’d almost prefer it if hideous Frank Fanshaw were still there. But he appears to have gone. He’s left a flood in the kitchen and chopped up half the furniture, by the looks of it. Stella sees as much in the dreary half-light that’s coming through the grime on the window where Frank pulled the board off. Was that really only yesterday?
The waterlogged torch lies lifeless on the scullery floor, but Stella has the Zippo and she will find some candles. There’ll be some in the front room – she doesn’t want to go in there, not unless she has to. There’ll be one on either side of the piano, in little saddle holders on the backs of two black elephants with real ivory tusks, sent from Africa years ago by some emigrated woman ever beholden to Grandpa Worthy. Better not to use those if she can help it. There’s candles in the cupboard under the stairs, but Stella doesn’t want to go in there either. Frank has left the door wedged shut with the one chair he hasn’t taken the axe to. She lights the Zippo and searches in vain in the sideboard drawers and cupboards, but no candles. Stella needs candles. She can’t hope to stay here tonight without them.
She’s got it all planned. She’ll drag a mattress from her grandmother’s room, she’ll open the porch door and sleep on the mattress in the doorway. She’ll put the sneck on the front door. That way Frank Fanshaw, if he comes back, won’t be able to get in the front with his key, and if by any chance – unlikely – he manages to scale the back wall and get in through the yard, Stella will be well placed to make a quick exit out the front. Sorted. But first she needs candles.
She can’t think where there’ll be any except in that cupboard under the stairs. And she’s not even sure about firing the Zippo up in there in case the whole lot goes up. She’ll have to take a chance. Stella stands back and kicks the chair away from the door. She has to kick a few times with her heel before the chair falls away and the door swings open. The old familiar smell comes out straight away. Stella stands as far back as she can and flicks the Zippo a few times until it catches. The flame burns big and blue. She shrinks it and it settles. She holds the Zippo out at arm’s length and looks into the cupboard from a distance. Nothing happens, apart from the smell. She takes a step or two forward, holds out the Zippo and scans the shelves.
All those chemicals. Still here. She can’t resist looking. She looks from one fading label to another. Diamorph. Hydroch. POISON. Dose 1/25 to 1/8 Grain. Oh my God, Stella believes that’s heroin. What did they want with heroin? She remembers Grandpa Worthy doling it out to ladies after their operations, instructing Stella to weigh the powder out on a little brass scale. She had no idea then what it was she was touching. My God. She moves the flame along the shelf, examines bottle after bottle. Ethyl Morph. Hydrochloride POISON; Atropine pur POISON; Hydrag. Perchlor. POISON. They’re all bloody poisons. Frank was right, the poisons cupboard. Why did they need poisons? So many different ones? Grandpa Worthy must have known what he was doing, surely. Ladies came flocking for his laying on of hands and went away, pale, in taxis, clutching at their remedies, forever coming back for more, smiling and grateful: bottles of Brandy, sides of ham at Christmas. Stella remembers atropine, from the plant deadly nightshade. It causes convulsions then stops your heart.
Grandpa Worthy had discovered his Gift for healing after an accident down the pit put an end to his coal hewing days. He’d been three days down there, trapped, had been pulled out minus a bit of the back of his head and three of the fingers of his left hand.
The smell of fumes from the cupboard is making Stella light- headed. She can see the bottles of ether and chloroform are empty. She hasn’t yet found any candles. She’s about to give up and shut the door when she notices Grandpa Worthy’s old leather medical bag, wedged into the back corner between two big green-glass carboys. Stella reaches into the corner and tugs at the old bag until she pulls it free in a cloud of dust and bits of straw and rodent shit. The familiar feel of the forbidden bag between her palms brings a rush of nausea and makes her heart go thump, thump, thump. She drops the bag down on the table and crams the cupboard door shut, wedges the chair and kicks it back into place before almost collapsing onto Grandma Willoughby’s chair by the fireside. Stella leans forward and puts her head between her knees. Her head’s swimming. It’s the chemicals. They have that effect on you. She shouldn’t have gone into the cupboard. Curiosity killed the cat, Grandma Willoughby says, waving a bony finger. Yesterday, when Stella was here with Frank, they’d had the cupboard open briefly; now it’s like the smell’s got stronger, more potent, the smell’s more like it used to be.
Part of Stella belongs here. Part of her has never been away.
The old medical bag carries the same fascination: Stella was never allowed to touch it and she hardly dares touch it now. She wishes now she hadn’t found it, or that she hadn’t picked it up. Grandpa Worthy was certain Stella had the Gift, the same as he had. He said he’d teach her all he knew if she was willing, he promised she’d inherit his medical equipment, that he’d watch her from the other side to make sure she used her Gift wisely and correctly. Stella had had to promise not to breathe a word to her grandmother. Now Grandma Willoughby would turn in her grave if she knew Stella had been in that cupboard and had got her hands on the precious bag. Stella looks at the bag again. She could swear the clasps are more open than they were a minute ago. It can’t do any harm to touch it, surely, not after all this time. Stella’s a grown woman now and she’s entitled to do what she wants, even including with her grandfather’s bag, God rest his soul.
Stella stretches out her hand and brushes some dust off the bag. It’s a kind of Gladstone bag, made of brown leather, covered in dust now after years of disuse on the floor of the cupboard. Two metal bars meet in the middle where the clasp is. She couldn’t swear it, but it looks to Stella like the bag is opening of its own accord. The spring in the clasp is probably rusted away and cannot hold it closed. Stella tries not to breathe in the dust as she blows along the top where the rusty metal catches are now fully open. The leather is stiff, dull and cracked. In the weak light Stella can just make out some lettering embossed in the leather along one side of the bag: WW Willerby, it says. Which is the wrong spelling of her grandfather’s name. And that middle W, that shouldn’t be there either. His Christian name was Worthy and he didn’t have a middle name.
Stella yanks hard on the metal
bars and pulls the bag wide open, as wide as it will go. In her head, a baby is wailing.
A flashing sense of the passage of time, the completed shape of her grandfather’s life, Grandma Willoughby sitting at the piano, the enduring sense of Muriel’s longing. A smell of disinfectant. Ladies, murmuring into handkerchiefs, the clack, clack, clack of their heels disappearing down into the basement.
Then Stella is tipping the bag upside down, shaking it until its contents have fallen out, scattered, half onto the table, half across the floor. She bangs the bottom of it with the flat of her hand. Things clattering out all over the place, echoing in the silence. Stella watches as a dead rat falls out, bit by bit, the head only half disintegrated, the spindly little bones, its nest of straw, flakes of brown paper, bits of feathers. Stella shakes and bangs until the bag is completely empty. Little vials of liquid with silver caps and something else made of glass, smashing into pieces as they hit the floor.
Then something bigger falls with a softer thud, comes out last. A leather roll, tied round with a single thong, gone brittle with age. Stella tugs at the thong, it snaps, and the roll is spreading open on the table. It has a dark red velvet lining, worn shiny in places. Stella sees it’s a pouch for instruments. There are long thick needles, rusted; a glass syringe with a metal plunger, the glass murky and clouded; pincers with sharp claw ends; rubber tubing, cracked and perished; a tiny hacksaw; hooks and spikes; a thing like an elongated corkscrew; flakes of rust leave stains on Stella’s fingers. She picks up a small bottle marked ‘Laudanum’ and immediately pulls her hands away. She sees now what these horrible instruments are for.