by Sarah Rayne
Did you really kill him, Thomasina? said these grating voices. Are you sure he was dead when you left him down there, are you, ARE YOU?
She had woken at 3 a.m. with the voices reverberating inside her head, and with fear clenching and unclenching so badly in her stomach she had to run to the bathroom. Back in bed she managed to get to sleep, but an hour later the process repeated itself. It was annoying to find that fear was something that grabbed you not romantically in the heart but sordidly in the gut. It was especially annoying because the use of Quire’s bathroom at such a silent hour of the early morning would be heard all over the house.
But it was important to behave as if nothing was out of kilter, and so Thomasina appeared in the morning room as usual. When Mrs Minching brought in kippers she forced herself to eat them and even asked for more toast.
After this she determinedly spent half an hour in Maud’s room, while Maud toyed pettishly with her own breakfast, consisting of coddled eggs and thin bread and butter–invalid food.
Questioned as to her day’s plans, Maud hunched her shoulders and said there was not very much you could plan for when you were locked away like this. Still, she might practise her music, she thought. Or she might read a little. And again there was that distant look, as if Maud’s mind was no longer quite with her body. It made Thomasina uneasy. Normally Simon had been with her when she came up here.
As if she had heard this last thought, Maud suddenly said, ‘Where’s Simon?’ and Thomasina felt a warning twist of discomfort in her stomach again.
But following her plan, even with Maud, she said, ‘I don’t know. He seems to have vanished–I’ve asked Reverend Skandry to make a few enquiries, but I should think we’ll find that he’s taken himself back to London without so much as a goodbye.
‘Oh, I see. I wondered where he was.’ The words were quite ordinary, but there was the furtive sliding away of the eyes again, as if Maud had grabbed Thomasina’s words and taken them into a secret corner to pore over them. Thomasina did not like this at all. She gathered Maud’s breakfast things onto the tray, and carried it to the door. Then she paused, and glanced back. Maud was still seated in the chair near the window, and she was watching Thomasina from the corners of her eyes. They had a dreadful sly glint; her lips were curved in a smile that seemed to bear no relation to the rest of her face. It was as if she was thinking: I know what you’ve been up to, Thomasina Forrester…I know all about you…
But Maud could not possibly know what had happened at Twygrist–she had been locked away up here. Even so, Thomasina was aware of the clenching pain she had felt in the small hours returning, like a hand dragging itself down in your bowels. Oh God, not again…
She murmured something to Maud about returning later, pushed the tray hastily onto a table, and got herself out of the room as quickly as she could, before half running down the stairs to the bathroom.
As soon as the colour drained from Thomasina’s face, leaving it pinched and sickly grey, the chance to escape suddenly presented itself to Maud. In her haste to get out–presumably to be unwell in decent privacy–Thomasina had forgotten to lock the door.
At first Maud did not believe it. She had not believed what Thomasina said about Simon leaving Quire, either, and she had sat down to play some of her beloved Paganini’s music: the eerie Caprice suites; the piece called Le Streghe which translated as The Witches. As she played, she laughed to herself over Thomasina’s discomfort. The laughter did not quite seem to belong to her, it seemed to bubble up of its own accord and become mixed up with the music. Maud found this a bit disconcerting, so she played louder and faster to drown the laughter out. When she stopped playing and laughing, she thought about the door.
It might be a trick. Let’s allow Maud to escape, Thomasina and Simon might have said. Let’s pretend one of us has gone away–we’ll pretend you’ve gone away, Simon, shall we?–and let’s leave her door unlocked, and hide on the stairs and watch her think she’s free. Then, just as she gets to the door, just as she thinks she’s going to walk free in the park, we’ll pounce. Yes, Maud could just imagine those two behaving so sneakily, but she was not going to be caught like that, not she! She was going to be too clever for Master Simon and Miss Thomasina!
Presently she heard the clanking plumbing in Quire’s bathroom one floor down. Pressing her ear against her door she heard the bathroom door open and close, and footsteps going down the stairs. A few moments later she heard the big main door opening. Was it Thomasina going out? Maud darted to the window. She had to be careful, she would not put it past Thomasina to watch the window from below. Sneaky. Sly.
No, it was all right. There Thomasina went, striding out as she normally did, wearing her woollen cloak with the hood. It was not especially odd for her to be out in the hour before lunch but it was unusual. She had quite an orderly pattern to her days and this time of the morning was generally devoted to correspondence. Dull stuff Maud had always thought it, but Thomasina had been strict about it, and said these things had to be done.
Against the grey morning she looked very formidable indeed. It was like a pen and ink sketch. If Maud had been going to stay in her prison she might have wanted to sketch it and use the Indian inks which Thomasina had bought for her.
But there was no time for that. The door of her prison was unlocked, she must take advantage of Thomasina’s being out of the house. Mrs Minching would be in the kitchen preparing lunch, and the two young maids would be with her.
Her heart thudding with excitement, Maud wrapped herself in her own woollen cloak–the very cloak she had worn that other night when Thomasina had found her hiding at Charity Cottage–and pulled on a pair of stout walking shoes.
She opened the door very carefully, and began to creep down the stairs.
After Thomasina had emerged rather shakily from the bathroom, she made the decision to put this nonsense to rest once and for all. She would go out to Twygrist this very morning, and go down to the kiln room and make sure Simon was dead.
The prospect of definite action steadied her, and her insides were immediately calmer. Once outside in the good bracing fresh air, she felt even better. She walked at a smart pace across the park–Charity Cottage’s little garden was looking very nice. Someone–most likely Cormac Sullivan’s daughter–had planted a lavender bush near the door.
She went on down the lanes. Twygrist, when she reached it, looked exactly as it always did. Of course it does, thought Thomasina. What did you expect? She glanced about her to make sure no one was around, and then unlocked the door and stepped inside.
It was an eerie repetition of her visit of three days ago. She lit a candle again, and went across the wooden floor to the lower waterwheel and through the narrow door behind it. The creakings and rustlings went with her–Thomasina shut them out because she was no longer worried by Twygrist’s macabre echoes; she was concentrating on what might be ahead.
She would not have been surprised to find the steel doors open–by now she would not have been surprised at anything–but the doors were as tightly closed as she had left them. She pressed her ear to the surface, trying to listen for any sound from within, but there was nothing. Or was there? Wasn’t that a faint tapping from the other side?
Thomasina stood back, trying to summon the resolve to open the doors. Logic dictated that Simon was dead–that he had been dead when she dragged him in here. Supposing he was not? But it had been three days now and he had been in there without food–more importantly, without water. Surely he could not have survived? She would open the doors and satisfy herself that there was nothing to worry about. Then she would go home and leave somebody else to discover Simon’s body.
She set her candle down on the ground and remembered about finding a wedge to hold the door open. It would be the worst of all ironies if she got herself shut in. She wondered if she should have some kind of weapon to hand, but she dismissed this notion as ridiculous and grasping the handle of the left-hand door, began to drag it open. It
moved more easily than it had that first time, but the screeching of the old hinges filled the tunnels exactly as it had done before. As the door swung slowly back there was a faint gusting of dry stale air in her face, and then the room was open.
Thomasina pushed the wedge into place, reached for the candle and held the flickering light up. For a moment she thought the room was empty, and she wondered wildly if the events of three days ago had been a grotesque dream or even a delusion. Perhaps Simon had secretly fed her opium as well as Maud.
And then she saw the room was not empty after all. Near the brick chimney, where once Twygrist’s fires had burned to dry the grain overhead, was a huddled shape. In the dimness it looked like a bundle of rags. Now she was a little nearer, and now the candle was burning up a little more strongly in the dry air, she could see the tumble of hair and an arm protruding from the bundle, the hand turned palm upwards in a terrible gesture of entreaty, the nails broken and crusted with blood.
Thomasina’s knees suddenly felt as if they could not support her, and for a truly appalling moment there was the watery quiver in her bowels she had experienced earlier that morning. She took several deep breaths and after a moment was able to take several steps towards the prone shape. Simon’s distinctive hair had fallen forward over his brow–he had always worn his hair slightly longer than most men–and Thomasina had to repress a ridiculous urge to bend down and smooth it back, and whisper how sorry she was that it had come to this. Because after all, Simon had been the closest thing she had to a brother–all those holidays at Quire, all those shared memories.
This is the mill that Joe built
This is the man who blackmailed and drank
Who died in the mill that Joe built.
But Simon’s son would live. He would grow up at Quire, and Thomasina would make sure he did not know that his father had been a weak blackmailing drunkard.
This is the boy conceived in the night
Who will inherit the mill that Joe built.
She was just turning to go when the flung-out beseeching hand moved and snaked its fingers around her ankle.
In a thread of a voice, Simon said, ‘Help me, you bitch…’
Thomasina recoiled, and tried to back away to the door. She was shaking so much the candle was in danger of going out, and she had no idea what to do.
‘Help me, you bitch…’
It came again, like the dry rustling of old bones scraping together, like the brittle tapping of fleshless fingers against a night windowpane.
‘Harder to kill–than you–think–Thomasina…’
‘I didn’t intend to kill you,’ said Thomasina, recovering her wits slightly. ‘Only to teach you a lesson.’
‘Liar…It’s been too long.’
‘No. You’re delirious. I miscalculated.’ But oh God, what do I do? Do I strike him over the head again? I can’t. I can’t. And he’s nearly dead as it is–how did he survive this long?
Playing for time, she said, ‘Can you get back upstairs if I support you?’
‘No…Too weak to walk, old girl. Kept alive by…drinking own urine. Cupped hands…’ And, as Thomasina made a gesture of distaste, the dreadful voice said, ‘Soldier’s trick–in desert.’
‘I’ll get you out,’ said Thomasina, not moving.
Simon made a feeble movement, and then fell back against the bricks. His voice, when he spoke again, was thin and weak, ‘You’ve found out, haven’t you? That’s why you’ve come back.’
‘Found out?’ Thomasina’s mind snapped onto a different course.
‘About Maud.’ said Simon. ‘You know that I–lied…’
‘What? What?’
‘Morning sickness–it wasn’t true…but couldn’t stand another night…’
Thomasina stared at him, but before she could take this in, a faint sound from within the tunnels made her turn sharply to the door. A stealthy footstep, had it been? No, it was only the old timbers creaking.
She looked back at Simon, and said, ‘Now, how do we get you out of here, I wonder?’
She thought Simon started to speak, but the sound came again, and this time it was not Twygrist’s timbers. This time it was unmistakably the sound of footsteps running along the tunnels. A cloaked figure appeared in the doorway of the kiln room. Maud! Maud, her eyes wild and unseeing, her hair whipped into disarray. She grasped the edge of the door, and before Thomasina could gather her wits sufficiently to do anything about it, had pushed it inward.
The hinges shrieked with a teeth-wincing sound, and the door slammed shut.
In the gust of air caused by the door’s closing, the candle went out.
Maud had not intended to follow Thomasina. What she had intended was to go home to Toft House and tell her father that Thomasina had gone away for a few days.
The prospect of this had buoyed her up all the way across the park, but just as she went through the gates, and set off towards Toft Lane, she saw Thomasina some way ahead of her, walking along very purposefully indeed. Maud went after her keeping well back and hoping not to be seen. It was a surprise when Thomasina turned off the road and went up the slope to Twygrist. She waited to be sure Thomasina was not coming out of the mill and then went after her.
The door was partly open, and the minute she stepped through it Twygrist’s dark sourness fell around her like a cloak. When she was small, her father had liked to bring her here to show her off to the women workers. They had all made a fuss of her, saying she was a dear little soul, what pretty hair she had, and how much would she charge for one of her sunny curls? After Maud’s mamma died, the women had said sorrowfully that she was a poor motherless lamb and must learn to be a good little housewife and look after her papa. Even so, she had hated Twygrist and she hated it now.
It looked as if Thomasina had gone down to the underground rooms, because the little door behind the waterwheel was propped open. Maud, slipped behind the wheel. There was a faint spill of light from the stairway, so Thomasina must have brought candles or an oil lamp with her. Maud took a deep breath and went down the steps, doing so very softly.
She could hear Thomasina somewhere up ahead–she even heard her muttering to herself, as she sometimes did. Most likely she was tutting at the mess down here; Maud could not hear very clearly. But she did hear the scrape of the kiln-room doors being opened.
This was puzzling. Why should Thomasina be going into the kiln room? But the reason did not matter, because a marvellous plan was shaping itself in Maud’s mind. Would it work? Would she dare? She went a bit nearer. Yes, the kiln-room door was open. Now? Yes, now!
Her cloak billowed out behind her like dark smoke as Maud darted along the last few feet of the tunnel and grasped the edges of the door. For the space of three heartbeats the moment froze, and she stared into the candlelit room. She saw the brick lining of the walls and the floor, smeary with cobwebs and dirt, and the old oven with the brick shaft rising up behind it.
Thomasina stared at Maud, astonished but not actually frightened. Lying on the floor at her feet was a grey-faced man. Simon! Aha, then Simon had not gone home after all. He had been hiding here all along. But whatever sly plan these two might have had, it was going to be turned against them because Maud was going to punish both of them in one fell swoop!
Before they could realize what she meant to do, Maud pushed the door as hard as she could. It swung inwards and locked, trapping Thomasina and Simon inside.
Coming up into the afternoon sunlight again, huge dazzling lights opened up inside Maud’s mind. Marvellous. She had not known how good it would feel to punish those two cruel beings. It would have been better if she could have locked Twygrist’s main door, but of course she had no keys.
There was no one around as she began to walk back to Quire, but Maud had not gone many yards when she heard the sound of tapping. She slowed her footsteps and half turned, listening. For a moment there was nothing, then it came again. Light, but insistent. Tap-tap… Tap-tap. It was probably someone carrying out so
me sort of work nearby: hammering nails into a roof or chopping wood.
Or a faltering hand knocking feebly on the inside of a door, trying to get out?
That was ridiculous. Even if Thomasina or Simon were tapping on the walls, Maud could not possibly hear them all the way up here. It would be a workman somewhere, and she would soon be out of earshot.
But she was not soon out of earshot. The sounds followed her as she hurried through the lanes towards Quire House. Tap-tap…Tap-tap… As she went through the gates, the sounds changed to Let-us-out… Maud shivered and went into the house, slipping up to her room unseen.
Tap-tap…Let-us-out…
The sounds stayed with her while she had her lunch in the dining room. Mrs Minching was pleased to see her downstairs at last. It was a nasty thing this influenza, wasn’t it, and it was to be hoped Miss Maud was properly recovered?
Maud said she was feeling very much better, thank you. No, she had not seen Miss Thomasina that morning, perhaps she had gone out to one of Quire’s tenants.
Several times in the hours that followed Maud had to fight not to clap her hands over her ears to shut the tapping out. Could it be those two in Twygrist?
Of course it could not. She was hearing her own guilty conscience because of what she had done. Except she did not feel any guilt.
She drowned out the sounds by playing some music.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It had been a bitter blow when, after all Donna’s care over furnishing the small flat for the two of them, Don did not want to live at home. He had not got a university place–Donna had not really thought he would, although she could have borne his absence on that account and would have enjoyed it. She had even dared to imagine herself and Don in an Oxford common room, or dancing together at the May Ball, and strolling across one of the famous quadrangles, arm in arm…