Spider Light

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘No,’ said Godfrey.

  ‘Your sergeant asked that when Miss Weston reported that business of the rope,’ said Oliver. ‘We didn’t have one then, and we haven’t got one now.’

  ‘Dr Saxon?’

  ‘No, I haven’t got a key. Dr Weston isn’t, so far as I know, in the habit of giving people her door key. But if you’re going into the cottage, I’ll come with you.’

  ‘So will I,’ said Oliver at once.

  ‘I’d like to have someone from the Quire Trust anyway,’ said Curran equably. ‘We’ll do it now, shall we? Best not to waste any time.’

  ‘Then you do think something’s happened to her?’

  ‘I’m reserving judgement, Professor Remus. But we’ve had a violent death here and we don’t know who’s responsible for it. We’re putting out calls to the nearby railway stations–Chester’s the main one, of course–but if Miss Weston’s gone anywhere of her own free will, she’s gone in her own car. And on that basis, we’ve also notified motorway service stations.’

  ‘You’ve got the car’s registration, have you?’ This was Oliver.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the inspector. ‘We’ve had that all along. It’ll be quicker if we drive to the cottage, I think, and my car’s just outside. Dr Toy, will you stay here?’

  Godfrey, appalled at the thought of remaining in the house on his own, said, ‘Well, I thought—’

  ‘It’s mostly in case Miss Weston turns up here. Or telephones.’

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll stay,’ said Godfrey, and sat down to plan how they would welcome Antonia back when she was found. Because of course she would be found, perfectly safe and well. Anything else was too dreadful to contemplate.

  Inspector Curran broke the kitchen window of the cottage, and Jonathan climbed through and unlatched the rear door. But the cottage yielded no clues at all. There were no signs of a struggle, and no notes left.

  ‘Would either of you know if any of her clothes have gone?’ said Inspector Curran, surveying the wardrobe in the bedroom.

  ‘I wouldn’t. I remember she was wearing that jacket when I happened to meet her in the library a few days ago,’ said Oliver. ‘But other than that, I can’t help.’

  ‘Dr Saxon?’

  ‘I can’t help either.’

  ‘Her phone doesn’t seem to be around, which is a nuisance,’ said Curran. ‘I’ll get Blackburn to make a proper search, though, and we’ll get on to the main cell-phone networks and try to find out what calls she made or received in the last twenty-four hours. That might give us something to work on. Oh, and there’s a laptop downstairs–did she have an email account?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘I’ll switch on in a minute and take a look.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit of an invasion?’

  ‘Professor, if Miss Weston has been carted off by this killer, nothing’s an invasion. And if she’s the killer herself, it’s not an invasion, it’s necessary evidence.’

  There was a brief silence, and then Oliver said, ‘You don’t really think she’s the killer, though?’

  ‘He might do,’ said Jonathan. ‘He’s probably thinking that she’s killed once, and–how old did you say that boy was last night?’

  ‘Nineteen or twenty.’

  ‘Don Robards was twenty-two,’ said Jonathan. ‘On that basis, I should think Antonia’s your prime suspect for this, isn’t she, inspector?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, sir. What I would say is that if those incidents she reported really happened, then there’s a very twisted, very sick mind in all this.’

  ‘And,’ said Jonathan, angrily, ‘if Antonia made the incidents up–or even set them up herself–then she’s the one with the twisted mind, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’

  ‘She struck me as perfectly sane,’ said Oliver and for the first time Jonathan sent him a quick glance of approval.

  ‘She is perfectly sane,’ he said. ‘She was a very good, very hardworking doctor of psychiatry, and it’s our loss that she was struck off. She admitted to killing Don Robards because he attacked her, but she shouldn’t have been given a prison sentence. If Robards hadn’t been her patient at the time, it probably wouldn’t have been prison at all.’

  ‘The law always was an ass,’ said Oliver. ‘D’you want any help with the search for the phone, inspector?’

  Antonia was aware that she was starting to tread a very fine line between keeping hold of sanity and tipping over into something that would not be sanity at all.

  At times she was afraid she had already stepped over the boundaries. She thought she heard the Caprice suite being played somewhere nearby and for a moment she believed Twygrist’s monstrous clock had wound itself backwards, and she was with Richard again and the nightmare of his death had never happened. She listened, to see if Twygrist picked up the music and spun it echoingly around her head, but it did not, and she thought after all she had imagined it. It faded after a time, but she heard her own voice, and realized with a shock that she was talking to Daniel Glass.

  ‘You helped me through the agoraphobia thing once or twice, Daniel, you seemed almost to be with me when I went out, so how about helping me again now? I don’t quite know how you could do it, but there must be something…’

  It was at this point she discovered she was speaking aloud, and her words were swooping above her head in the darkness.

  Drag me through the worst, Daniel…The worst, the wor-s-s-t…There must be something, s-s-something, there must, there MUST…

  Antonia clapped her hands over her ears to shut out Twygrist’s evil echoing voice, but that made the silence and the darkness so absolute she could not bear it. Even the inexorable ticking of the clock above her was preferable.

  She sat down with her back against the wall and tried to think logically. If she could not get out she would die from hunger or thirst. Dying from thirst was a particularly unpleasant death–didn’t you go mad at the end? How did I end up here, in this dreadful place, entirely on my own, facing madness and death? But I won’t believe I’m on my own: I’ll believe Daniel’s here. No, stop that, Antonia. Keep a grip. But what if that woman who knocked me out means to come back? That’s a nasty possibility. But I ought to be able to match her if it comes to a fight. Except that she’s clearly mad, and she’ll have the strength that sometimes goes with it…No, I’d better not think about that. I’d better focus on the practicalities of the situation. How long have I been down here, I wonder? It feels like quite a long time but for all I know I’ve lost all sense of time. The air’s reasonably fresh–does that mean it’s getting in from outside? How? From where? Think, Antonia. It’s not coming from those doors–I’ve felt every millimetre of them and they’re as tight-fitting as they could be. Then where else?

  For a moment there was only the thick darkness and the thudding of the clock, but she forced herself to think back, to that day in Quire House when she had looked at the sketches and diagrams of Twygrist’s interior. All the levels had been neatly depicted, all the way down to the underground rooms: the garner floor, the chute for the grain, the kiln room where they used to light fires to dry grain spread out at the top of the chimney vent…

  The chimney vent. Hope surged upwards, because if this really was the old furnace room–and Antonia thought it must be–then the air could be coming in through the chimney vent. Did that mean part of it had fallen in? And if so, might it be possible to get out by climbing up the chimney itself? Sanity teetered again, because it sounded like something out of a farce. Escaping up the flue. I don’t care how farcical it is if it gets me out, thought Antonia. And what a tale it would make–the kind of tale I could have told around a table with Richard and the friends we had all those years ago. For a moment an image of the big comfortable bungalow swam in front of her eyes, and the ache for Richard was as painful as it had ever been. She pushed it away angrily, got up, and began to feel her way along the wall again. After a few feet she stumbled over something l
ying on the ground, grazing her ankles, and making her head throb all over again with the impact. When she explored with her hands, she discovered she had fallen over a jumble of old bricks, and the thin curl of hope strengthened slightly. Had the bricks fallen out of the chimney wall? If so, it ought to be possible to knock more out; she could use one of her shoes as a hammer.

  The surface of the wall suddenly changed under her hands: from being stone it became brick. The start of the chimney wall? Yes, surely it was; it jutted into the room exactly as most chimney walls did, and here, about three feet up from the ground, was an unmistakable oblong of metal–steel or iron? Antonia felt all round it; as far as she could make out it was an oblong door, about four feet wide and about three feet high.

  Showers of rust broke away away as she pulled on the handle, but despite her efforts it refused to move. Despair gripped her. She took a firmer hold of it and this time something in the door’s mechanism yielded slightly. Antonia threw her entire weight onto the handle and, with a sound like human bones crunching, it turned and the door came partly open.

  Light came in: a dull clogged kind of light which might have been daylight or evening, it was impossible to know. But to Antonia it was the most wonderful sight in the world.

  She grasped the door’s edge and forced it back, and there was a slithering movement from within that made her jump backwards as if she had been burnt.

  Clouds of evil-smelling dust billowed outwards, and with them came something that had been huddled against the oven door–something that was pale and brittle and infinitely sad. It tumbled onto the floor, and Antonia backed away, gasping and shuddering. A human skeleton. Stupid to mind about such a long-dead body, such a dried-out remnant of humanity, but she did mind. The skull was turned slightly towards her, so the empty eye-sockets stared beseechingly at her, and the finger bones seemed to be reaching towards her.

  She finally managed to stop shaking, and when the clouds of dust began to settle, in the uncertain light, she could see it was the skeleton of a man. Her anatomy was rusty, but the human frame, once taught and understood, stayed with you. Yes, it had been a man, of quite large build, as well. Even in this light she could see that the femur bones were long, and the jawbone was unusually pronounced. Fragments of clothing adhered to the bones–the remains of leather shoes or boots were around the metatarsi, and there were wisps of hair on the skull.

  Whoever you were, I hope to God you were dead when somebody crammed you in there, thought Antonia. Or were you trying to escape? Whatever you were doing, I don’t like that split-second image I had of you pressed up against the oven door, as if you had hammered against it to get out…

  Summoning all her resolve, she sat on the edge of the open oven, and swung both her legs into it. Easy enough. Like levering yourself onto a low window ledge. The light was definitely coming from above. Antonia crawled deeper in, hating the grittiness under her hands, like little piles of instant coffee granules. But they were only the dried-out cinders of decades.

  She stood up, very cautiously. The chimney shaft was deeper than it had looked, although it seemed to narrow quite a lot as it went up. But cool air was brushing her face, and if she could get up to where the light was, she could yell for help. It looked as if it was daytime–although which day it might be, Antonia had no idea. But with reasonable luck there would be people within earshot.

  Now for the real test. Was there any way of climbing up towards that light. Rungs embedded in the wall? Surely the chimney must have needed cleaning from time to time, in the way of all chimneys? What about those poor little Victorian chimney-sweep boys? She began to examine the surrounding wall, inch by painstaking inch, scraping at the encrusted soot and dirt, trying to dodge the worst of the clouds of soot she dislodged.

  After what felt like a very long time, but was most likely only about half an hour, she forced herself to accept the fact that there was no means of getting up the chimney shaft.

  Donna had not been able to resist that last jibe at Antonia Weston with the music. She crept onto the old ceramic floor over the kiln-room ovens, and played the Caprice suite on the battery-operated CD-player. The floor was covered with a thick layer of concrete but there was a reasonable chance that Weston would hear. If so, she would do so through a nightmare of uncertainty and fear.

  It had been quite difficult to drag the inert body down into Twygrist’s bowels, but Donna found a discarded trolley, rather like a wheelbarrow, and managed to tip Antonia into it. She was wearing gloves and a tracksuit and the same balaclava she had worn in Antonia’s car, with the hood of her anorak tightly pulled over it. When Weston’s body was eventually found–as, of course, it would be–these tunnels would be combed for DNA evidence. And among the fragments from tramps and winos, somebody might just match up a single stray hair, or a thread of skin, and see that it was from the daughter of Jim and Maria Robards, both killed here, and the sister of Don Robards, murdered by Antonia.

  So she was very careful indeed, and only when she had got Antonia into the kiln room, and shone her torch around to make sure there was no way of escape, did she begin to relax.

  It was almost over. She had achieved what she had set herself to do all those years ago, and perhaps now there would be some peace.

  She went back to Antonia’s car, which she had parked well off the road, and drove it away from Twygrist. Her own car was just a mile further along. She was simply going to leave Antonia’s car parked on the roadside, and drive her own car away. Antonia’s car would be found, of course, but there would be nothing to link it to Twygrist.

  After today there would be nothing to link Donna with Twygrist, either. She had got away with it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Maud had been worried about the actual arrival at Toft House because there was a sign on the gateposts proclaiming the name, and Nell Kendal was expecting to be brought to Quire House. But her most pressing concern was that the bodies of George and Mrs Plumtree might have been found. It was barely twenty-four hours since she had gone into their bedrooms and smothered them, and discovery was not very likely, but Maud was keeping the possibility in mind.

  It was a relief, therefore, when the pony trap she hired at Chester railway station jolted its way up the lane, and she saw that Toft House was completely in darkness. And the gatepost sign was easy: she simply drew attention away from it by pointing to the house, and saying that Miss Forrester was at the infirmary, making the arrangements for Nell’s treatment. She had hoped Miss Forrester would be back by now, said Maud, but clearly she was not.

  Once inside, it was clear Nell did not like the house. Her eyes were huge and scared, and she kept glancing over her shoulder every few minutes.

  Maud said, briskly, that Nell could wash and tidy herself in the bathroom, and there was a bedroom at the back of the house where she would sleep. The bathroom was at the far end of the upstairs passage, beyond George’s bedroom, and as they went past it, Nell Kendal seemed to shiver. This was ridiculous: she could not possibly know what lay beyond that door, but Maud had a sudden disturbing vision of George (whom she no longer thought of as ‘father’), twisted and contorted on the bed, his eyes staring sightlessly upwards. Didn’t people’s bodies stiffen like wooden boards when they were dead?

  She pushed this from her mind, and sat down to wait in the deep window at the half-turn of the stairs. Once it had been the place where flower-like girls sat out dances in the days when Toft House had hummed with life, but Maud could only remember it being used for the cleaning women to put their polishing rags and beeswax when they cleaned the stairs. Tonight it would be where she would put one of the oil lamps, because it looked out over the high road, and a light up here would be seen for miles, and Maud wanted people to see lights here tonight. Some time during the next few hours, her escape from Latchkill would be discovered, and as soon as that happened, they would come out to Toft House to talk to George Lincoln. That they had not done so yet was apparent from its dark silence. Even so,
she had better work swiftly.

  She took Nell back downstairs, saying it would soon be time to set off. A carriage would come, she said. It felt quite strange to be talking into the silence like this, and receiving no response. But Catherine–Cat–had said her sister could hear and understand, even though she could not speak. Even so, it was disconcerting to be with someone who knew what you were saying but never replied.

  She brought Nell a glass of milk and a plate of biscuits. The pills, squirrelled away in her handkerchief while she was in Latchkill, went into the glass–Maud was pleased to see that they dissolved almost at once. Within ten minutes of drinking the milk, Nell was dazed and sleepy, and submitted to being led back to the drawing room, and to the window seat. She could wait there, said Maud. She would be able to see the carriage when it came.

  By this time Nell was too dazed to argue; her eyelids were already closing, and within minutes she was asleep. There was no time to be lost. Her sewing basket was in the desk where it always was, and Maud took the pinking shears from it. Working quickly, she sheared off the long light-coloured hair so that it resembled her own ragged crop. She was careful to sweep up the hair and put it all in the kitchen range. What else? Ought she to dress the girl in one of her own gowns? Yes, of course she ought. She did so, disliking the flaccid feel of the thin body, but doggedly pulling Nell Kendal’s own worn garments off, and putting them in the kitchen range along with the sheared hair. There should be time later to light the range and burn everything.

  Everything was working exactly to plan. The only thing she had not been able to plan for was whether the people who came for her would be people who knew her. Apart from Matron, she had only ever seen two nurses while she was in Latchkill–Higgins and the hatchet-faced one whose name she had never heard. Matron was unlikely to come and Higgins would probably be nursing her sore head after Maud had knocked her out. But hatchet-face might come, and Byrony Sullivan might come. Even Dr Glass. If that happened, the plan would fail.