by Sarah Rayne
This reasoning made her feel better, and she made a cup of tea and then switched on the television for the late-night news. She did not take in very much of it, but it gave her the feeling of being still a part of the ordinary world. There was probably not much point in trying to sleep tonight, and to go to bed was unthinkable: she would lie awake listening for the sounds of someone trying to get in. It was annoying to find that she was counting how many hours there were before Jonathan reached Amberwood. This was purely because he was a good friend, and would continue to be a good friend no matter what she was thought to have done. He would come in to bat on her side–he always had done.
After thought, she decided to spend the night on the sitting-room sofa with a book. There might even be a late-night TV film she could watch. She could keep the sound turned down very low so as to hear any stealthy footsteps outside, or the sounds of doors being tried or locks being tampered with. With any luck she might even manage to stop seeing Greg Foster’s body with the knife sticking out of his chest where someone had stabbed him in exactly the same way Don Robards had been stabbed when he had attacked her that night. And exactly as Richard had been stabbed. The music was there as well: don’t forget that Richard’s music was lying next to Greg Foster’s body. Whoever he is, this madman, he knows all about me. He knows all the vulnerable spots. Antonia spent several fruitless moments wondering about the identity of the man but could not come up with any useful possibilities. If Don Robards had had family she might have speculated whether this could be some warped revenge-plot, but all through his clinic sessions he had been definite about not having anyone and certainly no relatives had been called at the trial.
But it would be better not to think about Don tonight. She went upstairs to pull on a tracksuit which would be comfortable if she did fall asleep but practical if the killer came back. The bedroom was cold, and glancing out of the window Antonia was aware again of the dark isolation that surrounded Charity Cottage. The Inspector had said his men would be around for some time, but Antonia thought it would not hurt to check the barricades again. She went round the rooms, making sure that everywhere was locked and bolted and that the stools and chairs–in one case a clothes-airer–were all firmly in position. If Sergeant Blackburn could see her, he would file her under N for Neurotic, or even M for Mad, and Oliver Remus would probably agree. Antonia did not care what the professor thought. She did not care what any of them thought.
The sitting-room was warm, and the mobile phone was comfortingly within reach. The only sound in the room was the steady ticking of the clock on the mantel. It ought to have been a soothing sound, that rhythmic ticking, but somehow it was not. Antonia was dizzy with exhaustion but she was too frightened to give in to the need for sleep. Every creak of the cottage’s timbers sounded like a furtive footstep, and twice she sat bolt upright, the first time thinking she had heard a door being stealthily pushed open, the second time that someone had walked across the bedroom floor overhead.
She lay down on the sofa again, and finally began to relax. Sleep was starting to drag her eyelids down–dare she give in to it? The table lamp was on, so anyone prowling around would assume she was awake and think twice about breaking in. In any case, he’d fall over the clothes airer, thought Antonia, and aware how absurd this sounded finally allowed herself to sink into a sleep.
It was not a very peaceful sleep. It pulled her down into a disturbing world of bleak asylums with harsh treatments and venal matrons in charge, where an unknown, un-named patient pressed down into a cold stone floor, as if trying to escape the light. And from there into a world where a madman played music that trickled menacingly through the night, and where a hangman’s noose swung slowly back and forth, ready to strangle a murderer. Where the ticking of clocks somehow changed pace and became soft footsteps that sounded exactly like the stealthy sounds of someone creeping down a darkened staircase…At this point Antonia woke with a gasp, abruptly aware that the sounds were not in her dream: there really was someone coming down the stairs.
There was no chance to snatch up any kind of weapon or to reach for the phone or even to make a dash for the front door. The intruder was here, he was inside the cottage–I locked him in with me, thought Antonia in horror. He’s been in here all the time.
The door opened and the figure was there–dark, quite slenderly-built, wearing some kind of mask over its face. Antonia leapt up, but before she could do anything the intruder was upon her. Eyes, glittering and filled with hatred, framed by blackness, glared down at her.
A voice–an unmistakably female voice, said, ‘This is all for Don, you bitch. It’s to punish you for killing Don.’
Before Antonia could even cry out an arm was lifted and something came crashing down on the top of her head. There was an explosion of pain and a brief blinding flash of light behind her eyes. She spun straight down into a black gaping void where there was nothing at all.
From the dark attic Donna had heard Antonia return around eleven, and she had heard the murmur of a man’s voice. Then the police had come back with her! She lay down under the travelling rug at once, willing herself not to move, hearing the sounds of doors opening and closing and then of footsteps on the stairs. Oh God, oh God, the man was searching the cottage. Looking in the bedrooms–checking cupboards and wardrobes. Would he come up here? Would he even see the trapdoor over the landing? It seemed to Donna that hours crawled by while she waited, and that the whole world shrank to this dark stuffy attic where she crouched.
But it was all right. The footsteps had gone back down the stairs, and there was the murmur of voices again, and then the sound of the front door opening and then closing. After that came the unmistakable rushing of water from the plumbing as the tap downstairs was turned on. Donna dared to sit up, and risked a quick flick of the torch to see the time. Half past eleven. She visualized Antonia making herself a last cup of tea or coffee before going to bed. A pity the creature could not be tricked into drinking arsenic along with it.
Several times in the hours that followed she had to cautiously stretch her limbs to ward off the beginnings of cramp. Once she risked standing up, but the old floor timbers creaked so loudly that she froze and did not dare move again.
The hands of her watch crawled around to two, and Donna cautiously pushed the rug aside, sat up, and checked that she had everything she would need. She had fixed on two as the best time to make her move. The police were unlikely to be around at that hour–they had had five or six hours to pursue their investigations and they would hardly be searching the grounds in the pitch dark. The only real risk facing Donna was getting Antonia out of the cottage and into her car, but the car was parked close to the front door and she did not think the risk was so very great. It would mean driving down the narrow access road and onto Quire’s main carriageway but she thought she could do that without switching on the car’s lights and the cottage was far enough from the main house for the engine not to be heard.
She half-crawled, half-slid across to the trapdoor, and working with infinite patience, lifted it out and set it down on one side of the opening. It made the barest scrape of sound–nothing that could possibly be heard below. She secured the hooks of the rope-ladder to the edges of the opening, and climbed down. This was not an entirely silent manoeuvre but she prayed Weston would be asleep. Once on the stairs she took the sandbag from her anorak pocket. Now for it, you murderous bitch!
It was briefly disconcerting to discover the bedroom was empty. Donna stared at the unoccupied bed. Had Weston gone back to Quire House to sleep, and Donna had not heard her go? No, she was still here, Donna had heard her making tea and moving around. And she could feel her presence in the cottage now. She began to steal down the stairs.
As soon as she saw the spill of light from the sitting-room she understood that the creature had remained downstairs for the night in case of a break in. Very clever, Dr Weston, but not quite clever enough. This is it, Donna. This is what you’ve waited five years to do. Her
heart racing with a mixture of nervous tension and pulsating excitement, Donna pushed the door wide and went into the room.
There was a deep satisfaction in seeing Weston’s terror as she started up from the sofa, and there was an even deeper one in bringing the sandbag smashing down on Weston’s skull.
She went down as easily as Greg Foster had done, and an emotion so overwhelming and so vast gripped Donna that for a moment she was quite unable to move. She stared down at the unconscious figure. She had never seen Antonia Weston close to; she was smaller than Donna remembered from the trial, and she was thinner. Older. But even though Donna knew she must move quickly, she could not stop looking at the woman who had killed Don. She had not known she would feel like this–exalted and excited–and she had not known that she would hiss those last words to Weston. ‘All this is for Don,’ she had said, because it suddenly seemed vital that Weston understood why she was being punished. Had that been a touch foolhardy? Not really. Antonia would not be able to tell anyone; she would not speak to anyone ever again.
Donna sprinted back up to the landing, and climbing onto the bathroom stool again, dislodged the rope-ladder and slid the trapdoor back into place. She returned the stool to its rightful place, and coiled the rope ladder around her waist; it could easily be burned or flung into the Amber River later on.
She opened the front door, and glancing round to make sure no one was about, unlocked the door of Antonia’s car. Then she hooked her hands under Antonia’s arms, and dragged her out, tumbling her onto the back seat. She fell in a twisted huddle that looked painfully uncomfortable. Good. Donna went back into the cottage and looked round. Had she left anything that might provide a clue? No. She closed the cottage door, hearing the lock click home.
Her own car was parked about half a mile from Quire, well off the road and hidden by trees. She would have preferred to be driving it now for this difficult, risky journey, but it might be seen and recognized, or traced afterwards. It did not matter very much if Antonia’s car was seen although it must not be seen before she was clear of Quire’s gates. Hardly daring to breathe, Donna fired the ignition and steered slowly through the darkness onto Quire’s main carriageway. Nothing stirred anywhere and she went through the gates without mishap. Then she switched on the headlights and drove towards the road that led to Twygrist.
At first Antonia was not sure where she was.
She thought, to begin with, that she had fallen asleep on the sofa of Charity Cottage. There had been a clock ticking. Then she thought she was back in prison, huddled onto the thin bed in her cell, dreading the morning.
But as consciousness returned, she realized she was in neither of these places. She seemed to be lying not on a bed or a couch, but on a hard cold surface. The smells were all wrong for prison or the cottage, wherever this was, it was filled with a stifling sourness, like the soot from a very old chimney.
She opened her eyes to nothing. The pitchest of pitch blacks. Panic swept in instantly. I’m blind, she thought. No, I can’t be. But surely nowhere could be as thickly dark as this. She brought her hand up in front of her eyes, and could not see it. Panic clutched her all over again. I am blind. I’ve been ill or I’ve been in an accident–a road smash–and my head must have been injured because it’s aching dreadfully. I don’t know where I am, but I don’t think there’s anyone here with me.
Her mouth felt dry, but she called out, ‘Hello? Is someone here?’ and heard her words whispered eerily back to her. Someone here…S-s-someone here…here…HERE… And then they died away, and there was only a feeling of emptiness. Then I really am on my own. Oh God, where is this?
Some semblance of reasoning was starting to come back. She thought she could not be blind because the blackness was too absolute; blind people almost always had at least a slight perception of light and shade.
She sat up cautiously, but when she tried to stand a fresh jab of pain skewered through her skull. An injury then. But no bandages from the feel of it. She put up a careful hand to explore and found a lump on one side under her hair.
Memory was starting to return with agonizing slowness, and in snatches, like a jerky, badly cranked old film. Being in the cottage after that boy’s death. Locking all the doors against the murderer. Only the murderer had already been in there–hiding, waiting to creep out. Antonia remembered those hate-filled words: ‘This is for Don, you bitch. All this is to punish you for killing Don.’
A woman’s voice. ‘This is for Don.’ And then that crunching blow on her head. Had it been a girlfriend of Don’s? Family that he had not admitted to? Whoever it was, was she going to come back?
Antonia was not going to sit here meekly, hands folded, waiting for her captor to come back. She made another attempt to stand up and, although it made her head throb, this time she managed it. It was horribly disorienting to stand in absolute darkness like this, but it would have to be endured. She would find a wall so she could feel her way along it. It would be something definite to do, and concentrating on it might help her to ignore the darkness and the silence.
But with this thought came the realization that it was not absolutely silent. Antonia had half consciously been aware of a pounding against her mind, which she had ascribed to the blow to her head. But it was not inside her head at all. It was outside it: a slow regular sound that made her think of machinery. Something beating along a prescribed course. Something thudding against metal or wood…Maddening, inexorable.
Something beating, over and over, like a distant sledgehammer in a far-off forge–No! Not beating. Ticking. The ticking of a huge, unseen clock.
Memory clicked into place, and Antonia saw the road that led down to Quire House and the building that skulked at its side. A building whose wheels and sluices and grinding stones had long since ceased to work, but a building that had, set into one of its walls, an immense clock.
She was inside Twygrist. And from the feel of it, she was somewhere below ground. The stifling sense of darkness, the sour stale air…But let’s not think about how much air there might be down here.
Had Twygrist underground rooms? Yes, it had: there was that display in Quire House, complete with the sketches of the machinery and the layout–Antonia remembered studying it on her first visit. There had been a room well below ground level–something to do with drying the grain, she thought. A furnace room with a brick oven, and what had been some sort of perforated floor directly above. Did that get her any nearer to escaping? She could not see that it did, and on balance she would have preferred not to know about the crouching bulk of the old mill directly over her head.
She inched her way to the right, both hands outstretched, and without warning came smack up against a wall. Its surface felt dry and harsh, but Antonia began to feel her way along it, praying not to encounter anything that moved or scuttled. Or had a thin boneless tail and tiny sharp teeth, because goodness knew what lurking creatures might have their homes down here. She shut this thought off, and concentrated on the image of a doorway, because doorway there must certainly be.
And here it was! Oh thank you, thank you. Quite a big door as well, not timber, some kind of metal, and possibly steel. Well, of course it would have to be metal; if there were ovens down here it had presumably been necessary to seal the place off when the fires were lit. Antonia felt all round the door’s outline. It was fairly solid and there were scratches on the surface. Pitted with age? She could feel the marks quite plainly, but what she could not feel was a handle or a latch, or any means of opening the door.
This was not acceptable. This simply could not be happening. She felt all round the door again. Be careful not to panic, Antonia, because panic’s the very last thing you can allow yourself. The door was as smooth as an egg. It was very nearly seamless.
She was shut into the underground room of the old mill, and somewhere above her was a clock banging the minutes away, and beyond all this, perhaps getting ready to stalk Antonia through this sour-smelling darkness, was a murderer.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
During the comfortable years spent in Toft House, George Lincoln had got into set habits. There was nothing wrong with that; it was what people did.
At ten o’clock each evening, Mrs Plumtree always brought in a tray of tea and sandwiches for his supper, and then went off to bed. George drank his tea, ate his sandwiches, and by eleven o’clock, almost to the tick, he was on his way upstairs to bed.
It was a routine that suited him very nicely, although since Maud had been in Latchkill it was no longer a comfortable one. Every time he thought about Maud, George could still scarcely believe what he had done, but in the days following the discovery of the two bodies in the mill, he was aware of a certain relief. The police had questioned everyone about Thomasina and Simon Forrester’s deaths–who had seen them, and when and where, and why they might have been in Twygrist in the first place–and George was thankful that Maud was safely out of their reach. He thought the sergeant asking the various questions had barely even realized that George had a daughter.
George himself told the sergeant that Miss Thomasina had mentioned to him the possibility of starting Twygrist up again. He had been careful to say this as if it was something he had only just remembered, and he thought this had helped tip the balance to the verdict of accidental death. Clearly, said the coroner presiding over the inquest which was held at the nearby Rose and Crown, these two unfortunate people had gone out to the mill to take a look at its condition, and become trapped in the kiln room. He was not a local man, and appeared to have thought up for himself a happy little picture of two cousins–he made no doubt they had been good friends and childhood companions–going off on their little expedition to see if their family’s business might be revived. On a sterner note, he added a little homily about the proper securing of old and potentially unsafe buildings, although, as a number of people said afterwards, Twygrist had belonged to Miss Thomasina anyway, and she of all people ought to have known the dangers of the kiln room.