I ran my eyes down Not Exactly Philately’s list of odd artefacts, searching for something I thought I could pretend a genuine interest in. Most of the things seemed pretty dull – certainly there was nothing as emotive as a hangman’s watch. Then my heart, as they say, skipped a beat:
Parker Duofold pen, onyx and silver. Originally the property of Edward John Fawcett, FRCS, struck off after being implicated in the murder of his sister, Clarissa Worthen Fawcett (London, 1908). Perfect working condition, original leather case.
I was having what I can only refer to as a David Icke Moment, assailed by the conviction that the advert had been placed there specifically for me to find. I did my best to shrug that feeling aside. It was only natural that Mccabe would have Fawcett’s pen, if you stopped to think about it. As a dealer in historical criminal artefacts, Mccabe was bound to know the history of the house he lived in, a history that included Edward Fawcett. Fawcett’s possessions would make good business, for those who were interested – and Mccabe’s customers would be interested. Their fascination for obscure soteric was what defined them.
I sent an email to the address in the advertisement, stating that I had a particular interest in medical murders, and that I would be keen to take a look at Edward Fawcett’s Duofold Parker. I was taken aback to see an email listed, to be honest – [email protected] – although again, my surprise was misplaced. Everyone has email these days, even monsters.
Mccabe came back to me in less than two hours. He even signed his name.
If we can agree on a suitable deposit, I can send you the item on approval, he wrote, although ideally I would prefer it if you could call in person. I grow increasingly disinclined to trust such unique artefacts to the vagaries of what passes for our postal system.
I emailed back straight away, telling him I’d be happy to come to him, subject to the distance involved. I’m based in West London, I wrote.
Mccabe replied in under ten minutes, giving his address as Flat 1, Greystone Lodge, NW5. That’s ten minutes’ walk from Chalk Farm tube, give or take, he added. Of course I knew that already. We agreed that I would call on him the following Wednesday – I had plenty of overtime saved up – and that Mccabe would not sell the pen to anyone else until I had seen it.
Whatever I did or did not find at the house, I half made up my mind that I would buy the pen anyway. A decent fountain pen lasts forever and increases in value. I liked the idea of owning it. Why wouldn’t I?
THE HOUSE LOOKED different in daylight: less singular and more dowdy. I noticed signs of its ordinariness everywhere: the chipped exterior paintwork, a one-wheeled bicycle cluttering up the yard of the basement apartment, the tarnished letterbox, clogged with junk circulars.
A once-fine house that had seen better times, like so many in London. I arrived more or less on the dot, a studied five minutes after the time Mccabe and I had agreed upon in our emails. I rang the bell for the first floor apartment. I felt pretty stupid, actually, an inch away from laughing at myself, and as I stood there on the top step waiting for Mccabe to come to the door I found myself thinking of those old mates of mine, the lads who’d been with me the night I fell down and hit my head outside the Oak, and wondering what the hell they’d say if they could see me now. Tony Stoney and Jez Littell, they would love this. William Randle, ghost hunter, I thought to myself in what we used to call Tony Stoney’s MGM voice.
I hadn’t seen any of them in years. That’s how it is with school chums. You keep in touch for a while, then you drift apart. It’s inevitable, I suppose. And also sad.
“Mr Randle, I presume?”
“Will.” I put out my hand, startled. I’d been so taken up with my thoughts that Mccabe’s sudden appearance had taken me by surprise. He was – I don’t know – just a bloke. Fiftyish and slightly balding, jacket and tie, hard grey eyes. He looked like a Tory politician, or a businessman on his day off, which I supposed he was.
Not what I’d expected, but then, what had I expected? The devil himself – Tony Stoney’s stupid film voice again. I kept wanting to laugh.
“Come in,” said Mccabe. He disappeared inside and I followed. I tried to pull the door shut behind me but it stuck in the frame.
“It’s the weather,” Mccabe said. “It needs a good tug.” He reached past me, grabbed a heavy brass ring that had been screwed to the inside of the door panel, probably for exactly this purpose. He heaved the door to with a heavy thump.
The hallway was square and rather dark: russet and cream floor tiles, a broad staircase with a particularly beautiful carved banister. “I’m upstairs,” Mccabe said, leading the way. A door at the top of the stairs bore a brass number 1. At the far end of the first floor landing, a second, narrower staircase led upwards to the floors above. I turned my back on it, rather hurriedly, not liking the way the stairs, which were approached via a kind of inner hallway, seemed to disappear into absolute darkness.
The light’s off, that’s all, I told myself. Waste of electricity otherwise. I found that I was sweating. I felt alive with nerves suddenly, with an itchy, skin-crawling certainty that I was about to be found out. Found out in what exactly, I had no idea. I was here to buy a pen, I reminded myself. Advertised through reputable channels. I had been invited.
ON THE OTHER side of the door, Mccabe’s apartment was clean and bright and almost cavernously large, with a partially open-plan layout that surprised me. Lionel Rose had talked about the flat’s Georgian proportions, but aside from the cornicing and window shutters, the heritage feel I’d been expecting was entirely absent. I glanced quickly around, taking in the two enormous suede-covered Chesterfield sofas, the Bauhaus-looking glass-and-steel coffee table, the large wooden globe. Indeed, maps seemed to be a theme in the main room, with more than a dozen framed antique cartographies displayed on the walls.
One of these I noticed in particular: a gorgeously illuminated map of mediaeval London. A reproduction, I assumed – the original would have cost many thousands of pounds.
Almost in spite of myself, I stepped closer, eager to examine it in more detail. I thought of Lionel’s map, from 1800, with Queen’s Crescent and Greystone Lodge marked in red pencil.
Greystone Lodge hadn’t existed in 1247, of course – just forest and rough pastureland, where beasts were grazed.
Oddly, I saw the position of the house had been marked in any case, marked with a sea-green, long-lashed eye, although there was nothing where it now stood but marshland and fields.
I felt my heart clench a little. Weird, I thought. A maggot. Like a goose just walked over my grave.
“That’s quite a rare map,” Mccabe said. I jumped. I’d more or less forgotten he was there. “Are you interested in maps generally?”
“I like maps of London.” I turned slowly to face him. “I find it interesting to see how the city has changed.”
“You’re not a Londoner yourself though, are you?”
There it was again, that faint breath of condescension and amused tolerance, an attitude I was well familiar with from when I first joined the civil service: keep your hair on, old chap, we’ll let you in, so long as you wait your turn. Our friend from the north. Bugger them. Well, at least you could say I was used to it.
“I grew up in Knutsford,” I said. “My folks are from Manchester.”
“Ah. I’m up in Manchester myself on business, quite often. I have a house in York.”
At the mention of York, something seemed to curl up inside me – to curl up, and then inch open again, unfurling itself like a hand, long fingers like fern fronds, clutching themselves tightly around some hidden, unsavoury object before revealing it, salaciously, to the light of day.
“York?” I said stupidly. York meant one thing to me, one thing only: Claire’s disappearance, Dave’s panicked phone call, Claire’s apparent return. A truth glimmered at the margins of my mind, but I pushed it away again. So Mccabe had a house in York. Him and a gazillion others. So what?
“A beautiful city,” Mccabe said.
“My grandmother was from near there. Would you care for coffee?”
I told him yes, that would be splendid, if only because that was the answer I would have given had I actually been there for the reason I was pretending. Coffee, and more talk. An interesting house, a pleasant host. Why hurry?
“I’d offer you lunch but I seem to be out of everything,” Mccabe added. “The place goes to pot when Regan’s away.”
“Regan?”
“Regan Geest – my secretary. She’s in Horsham, visiting her brother. Back on Friday, thank goodness. Anyway, I’ll go and fix that coffee. Make yourself at home.”
He turned and left the room. I began looking around, searching for clues to what it was that Blythe Mccabe really did for a living. I found it difficult to believe in his murder memorabilia business as anything more than a hobby, although perhaps I was wrong there. The room was stuffed with things – books, photographs, pieces of art – and yet it remained determinedly opaque, a facsimile of a room, skilfully dressed, rather than the home of a real person. I can’t explain why I thought this, but I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that the stage had been prepared in advance, that I’d been set up, that in examining Mccabe’s possessions and surroundings in this way, I was behaving exactly as I had been intended to.
That in making myself at home, as Mccabe had put it, I was already acceding to his plan.
I glanced out of the window, reassured by the sight of the street outside, the pedestrians, the passing cars. I saw my own face superimposed on them, reflected in the glass, and behind me, in the room beyond, a partly open door. I’d somehow missed seeing it before, yet when I turned away from the window there it was, a white-painted doorway leading off the main room, not into the hallway as I’d initially thought but into some sort of inner vestibule. I crossed the room and peered inside. There was a shallow alcove, with a row of coat hooks, and then another door beyond. I frowned. As far as I remembered, the wall in front of me was an exterior wall. There couldn’t be a door there, not one that led anywhere.
Clearly I’d misinterpreted the apartment’s layout – easy enough to do with a place this size. The inner door was also standing open, just an inch or two. I listened carefully to make sure Mccabe wasn’t creeping up on me then put my eye to the crack.
I saw a neat, almost Spartan-looking bedchamber: wood-framed bed with a plain, burgundy-coloured quilt, parquet flooring with its accompanying scent of wax. A large, rather ugly Edwardian wardrobe and matching dressing table. In contrast with the polished modernity of the main living room, everything here seemed stubbornly archaic and faintly dusty. It was almost as if I’d wandered into a neighbouring apartment by mistake.
Like in Rosemary’s Baby? That was Ronny’s voice, of course it was – we’d watched the movie together on video, cuddled up on her parents’ sofa with a big tin of Quality Street. You know, when the Satanists break in through the back of the airing cupboard?
“That’s Regan’s room,” Mccabe said. This time I jumped a mile. He’d sneaked up on me after all. “I’ve offered to have it remodelled for her – countless times – but she won’t hear of it. Says she likes the original features. The whole place was like this when I bought it. Quaint, I suppose, if you like the Victorian orphanage look. I’m not a fan, personally.”
That was when I asked him how long he’d been living there. We passed back into the living room, where for the first time I noticed the painting of Greystone Lodge at sunset, by Kenneth Ayrton.
A facade, I thought as I admired it.
A placeholder.
A maggot.
We drank the coffee, which was ridiculously good, and then Mccabe showed me the pen. It was beautiful: gold-trimmed cap and amber barrel and, as Mccabe had promised, in perfect writing condition.
I purchased it on the spot, for the sum Mccabe named.
I lingered for a while afterwards, listening to an anecdote of Mccabe’s, about a sale of artefacts he’d recently attended in Harpenden. I was curious to see if he might volunteer any information about Edward Fawcett’s personal connection with Greystone Lodge, but he didn’t mention Fawcett at all.
I left shortly before lunchtime. Before heading back to the tube, I crossed to the opposite pavement and looked up at the house. One last time, or so I thought then. I was trying to make sense of its topography, trying to work out which of the windows belonged to Regan Geest’s room, but I couldn’t do it. In the end I gave up and walked away. The building looked different from the outside. Both more confusing and less so, at the same time.
THAT NIGHT, I dreamed of Greystone Lodge. I wouldn’t call it a nightmare exactly – nothing so dramatic – but I woke up feeling anxious, pursued by anxiety almost, as if a momentous decision had been taken behind my back, and its ramifications were slowly seeping through to me via my subconscious.
It wasn’t the house as such I dreamed about anyway, but Regan Geest’s room, that peculiar monk’s cell, like a tiny segment of the past trapped inside the present, an atom of time, caught and bottled. A stasis.
I saw the bed, with its burgundy counterpane, the gleaming parquet. And I knew she was watching me, Regan Geest I mean. I knew she was somewhere in the room, and I was terrified to turn and see her, because then I would be hers.
I felt groggy from lack of sleep, even though apart from the dream I’d slept perfectly well. The more I thought about the dream, the more I became convinced it was trying to tell me something – that Regan Geest hadn’t been away visiting her brother at all, she’d been there in the flat all along, secreted somewhere, watching.
What, like in a cupboard? Jez Littell’s voice this time. Don’t be a fucklord.
I missed them, I think, the lads, more than I realised. And Jezza was right – why would Mccabe have said Geest was away if she really wasn’t?
I had a sudden image of Lionel Rose, holed up in his cottage in Knaresborough, afraid to pick up the telephone.
Had he dreamed about the house as well? Was that how it started?
I ordered myself to snap out of it, to get ready for work like any normal adult. Two more things happened that day: first, I received an email from Mccabe, telling me he’d paid in my cheque and that he’d just had word of another item that might be of interest to me.
It seems that Edward Fawcett’s personal diary has come to light. If it is genuine, which I am sure it is, I can offer you first refusal. Same time next week?
The email arrived not long after I got into work, which meant I spent most of the day churning over it and not answering.
THE SECOND THING that happened is that I had a postcard from Claire. It was there on the hall table when I came in from work, sandwiched between my quarterly electricity bill and Sight & Sound magazine.
I’m worried about you, Will, it read. Don’t get dragged in.
The image on the front was of York Minster. The postcard’s edges were brownish and soft, aged, although the blue ink that had been used to write the message was strong and bright. An old postcard then, ferreted out from the back of a drawer or somewhere. It wasn’t difficult to guess when it had been bought – I could have pinned down the date and time to within a couple of hours – and the fact that Claire had chosen this postcard to send her message – this one precisely – said more than the message itself.
She hadn’t signed the card, but then I doubted the thing that lived inside her would have let her.
I searched through some stuff I’d kept – birthday cards, menus, holiday snaps, things like that – looking for something with Claire’s handwriting on it, just to check, though I understood I was going through the motions. I knew Claire’s handwriting, from Christmas and birthday cards throughout my childhood, from the letters and notes she’d continued to send me throughout my years at university.
Of course the writing was hers. Or at least her hand had formed the words.
I’m worried about you, Will.
But was it Claire who had written the message, or Claire’s maggot?
AT SOME POINT during that seemingly endless week between my first visit to Greystone Lodge and my second, I did what I swore to myself I’d never do: I searched Ronny’s telephone number and postal address. I’d always known that for Ronny and I to stand any chance of getting back together, the first move would have to come from her. So far there’d been nothing – not even a Christmas card – but I never let myself give up hope, and a part of that hope meant sticking to my own resolution not to spy on her. Not even in small and harmless ways – I knew how quickly small and harmless could snowball into obsession.
That week, though. I had no intention of calling her number, or of going round there. I just needed to know where she was. Which turned out to be Hounslow. I looked up the street on Google Maps, I have to admit, but that was all.
I RECEIVED THREE more notes from Aunty Claire. The second arrived two days after the first: another postcard, the same faded colour photograph of York Minster. On the reverse side the words were crammed so closely together they were difficult to read. There was barely room left over for my address.
Claire means light, Willy, and Clarissa means the brightest light of all. –issa is a Latin superlative, meaning finest or best. He did not know I was called Claire, how could he know, but when I told him my name he laughed, laughed as a person laughs when they’ve been right all along, and known it, when the proof is just the icing on the cake. Don’t blame Clarissa, Will – she was badly used. And Geest, poor Geest. She once loved sewing, and books, and beetles. The tiny stitching relaxed her, all those long summer evenings. Even brothers can be monsters sometimes. How can we know we are being sold into servitude, with no hope of return? I’m so proud of you, my darling. He laughed, you know, like a drain. A drain clogged with mildew. STAY AWAY.
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