The Sin Eater

by Sarah Rayne

  This was much shorter, and was dated a couple of weeks after the first one. It described how the police had been admirably vigilant and energetic in their endeavours to lay the Mesmer Murderer by the heels. The killer had apparently been arrested and a trial set up. However, he had escaped from police custody while being transferred from Newgate Gaol. Police had refused to release his name, but the paper’s reporter – by dint of ingenuity and one of the brand new Eastman Kodak ‘Brownie’ cameras – had managed to obtain a photograph of the killer.

  Staring from the page of slightly smudgy newsprint was the face that had haunted Benedict for the last twelve years. The face of his great-grandfather. Declan Doyle.

  FOUR

  The closing sentence of the newspaper article stated that the police had no more leads and, at the time of going to press, the Mesmer Murderer had not been recaptured.

  Of course he wasn’t, thought Benedict, sitting back, his mind in turmoil, the grey and black image on the page burning deep into his brain. He never was recaptured.

  The mention of Victorian serial killers always brought to people’s mind one iconic image: the silhouette of a black-cloaked killer, only ever known as Jack the Ripper, forever surrounded by the swirling mists of a Victorian London ‘pea-souper’, a case of glinting surgical knives at his side . . . But Jack, it appeared, had had a rival for the dark title and that rival had been Declan Doyle.

  Declan had been the Ripper turned respectable. After the killings, he must have gone to ground somewhere and later bought Holly Lodge – although God knew how he afforded it, thought Benedict – then married and settled down into prosperous, middle-class London society. Who had he married? Benedict did not know anything about his great-grandmother, Declan’s wife, although he had a vague impression she had died young. But whoever she was, had she known she was married to a murderer?

  He could feel the familiar needle-jabs of apprehension scratching at his mind again, and, after a moment, he forced himself to look across at the old dressing-table mirror. Did something move in its depths? Something like a piece of old cine film struggling to come into focus?

  And then, between one heartbeat and the next, he was there. The man who had walked in and out of Benedict’s mind for the last twelve years, the man whose face had stared out of the old newspaper. Declan Doyle, who had apparently prowled Victorian Docklands and slaughtered five people. Three men and two women, thought Benedict, unable to look away. Declan was standing as he always did, slightly sideways on so that one side of his face was partially hidden, but Benedict could see details he had never seen before. The vivid blue eyes, the tumble of dark glossy hair, the soaring cheekbones . . . You might have been a murderer, thought Benedict, but you must have been a knockout, you really must.

  ‘I was . . . There was many a lady, Benedict . . .’ There was an unmistakable note of amusement in the silvery voice now.

  The last thing Benedict wanted was to respond, but he could not help it.

  ‘Why did you leave Ireland?’ he said softly.

  ‘Because of Romilly.’

  Benedict was not actually hearing the words, he was feeling them etch themselves into his mind. He thought if anyone else had been in the room they would not have heard them.

  ‘She was a wild one, that Romilly. You’d think butter wouldn’t melt – you’d think the saints themselves would trust her with their salvation, but she was as bold as a tomcat under all the fragile innocence. Red hair and skin like polished ivory. And eyes that would eat your soul. There are some eyes that can do that, did you know that, Benedict?’

  ‘No,’ said Benedict shortly. ‘In any case I don’t believe you.’

  ‘But one day, Benedict, you will, because one day you’ll walk with me along those cliffs on Galway’s coast, and we’ll see the devil’s watchtower together, and you’ll understand what happened that day and why I can reach out across the years like this . . . There are chords deep within the mind, Benedict, and they can resonate far longer than anyone realizes . . .’

  The glinting needle-points dug harder into Benedict’s mind, splintering it into jagged, painful fragments. He gasped and put up his hands in an automatic gesture of defence. As he did so, he felt, quite distinctly, a hand – a dry, light hand – close around his and pull him down into that place he had glimpsed all those years ago . . . The place where there was a wild lonely coastline with black jagged cliffs and the ancient watchtower.

  The place where the devil walked . . .

  Ireland, 1890s

  Declan Doyle and Colm Rourke had never entirely forgotten their vow that they would one day go up to the devil’s watchtower and beard the mysterious, sinister Nicholas Sheehan in his lair. At odd intervals over the years they reminded one another of it. Wouldn’t it be a fine thing to do, they said, and wouldn’t it impress all the girls in Kilglenn and Kilderry too, and maybe even beyond.

  But it was not until they were both nearly nineteen that they actually made good their boast, although as Declan said, it was not for the lack of wanting that they put it off so long. Colm said if truth were to be told, they did not actually put it off, rather it put them off. There were always so many other things they had to be doing. There were tasks in each of their homes – Colm’s father had died a few years earlier, so he had to help with carrying and fetching and daily errands. Declan, who had a full complement of parents, was server at Mass each Sunday, which meant attending extra religious classes. They were both in the church choir which meant a practice every Thursday so they could whoop out the Kyrie at High Mass while the rest of the congregation was surreptitiously sleeping off the poteen taken in Fintan Reilly’s bar the night before or laying bets on how long Father O’Brian’s sermon would last.

  And there was school every day in Kilderry so they would not grow up like tinkers’ children without a scrap of book-learning to their name. They went there on the back of Fintan’s cart, which he took to Kilderry every morning to replenish his bar after the exigencies of the previous night, apart from Mondays since not even Fintan dared open his bar on Sundays. Declan’s father had promised to look out for a couple of bicycles for next spring so the two boys could cycle to school and back home, because Declan’s mother did not like him to be riding on a cart that stank of last night’s poteen and the gin Fintan kept for the hussies who enjoyed drinking it.

  But no matter how they got there, both families were agreed that Declan and Colm must know how to read and write and to know a bit about history and geography. They had to learn some Latin as well, said the monks who ran the little school, and never mind about Latin being a dead language. It was not dead as far as the Church was concerned; in fact it was the universal language of Catholics. Imagine if they were to find themselves in a foreign country some day, and not know its language? How would they go on about confession in that situation? But if they could speak Latin, they could confess their sins in Latin and the priest – and never mind if he was French or German or Italian or anything else – would understand them.

  ‘Be damned to confessing sins in a foreign country, I’d be too busy committing the sins to care,’ said Colm, and Declan grinned and agreed it’d be great altogether to see a bit of the world.

  Colm was good at mathematics and understanding about mechanical things. Declan shone in the classes for reading and writing. He was a dreamer, Colm sometimes said, to which Declan always retorted that didn’t the world need a few dreamers, and it a wicked place.

  ‘I’d like to be wicked,’ said Colm, his eyes glowing. ‘I’d like to create scandals and outrages, and I’d like to be talked about from here to – to England and America.’

  But of the three children, growing up in Kilglenn, it was neither Colm nor Declan who created the scandal. It was Colm’s cousin Romilly.

  The evening was one of the silent scented evenings that sometimes came to Kilglenn at that time of the year. Everywhere was drenched in soft violet and indigo light, and the ocean was murmuring to itself instead of roaring
gustily – the sounds so soft you could believe the creatures of the legends were singing inside them. On a night like this, if you stood on a particular point on the Moher Cliffs you could persuade yourself you were glimpsing the sidhe dancing on the water’s surface – the ancient faery people who had chill inhuman blood in their veins, and who would pounce on the souls of men and drag them down to their world for ever.

  ‘I think I’d go with them without having to be pounced on,’ Colm said, as he and Declan stood looking out to the shimmering wastes.

  ‘It’s Homer’s wine-dark sea tonight,’ said Declan, staring across the water’s surface.

  ‘Wine was never that gloomy colour.’

  ‘Your trouble is you’ve no romance in your soul.’

  ‘I have plenty of romance,’ began Colm hotly. ‘In fact—’ He broke off and turned to look back at the path that wound back down to the village. ‘Someone’s coming up the path,’ he said.

  It was unusual for anyone to venture out to this part of Kilglenn. Most people said it was too lonely and too steep, and the spray from the ocean was enough to give anyone a terrible dose of the pneumonia, but after a few drinks at Fintan’s, they also reminded one another that the devil had once walked those cliffs. You couldn’t trust him not to still do so if the mood took him – especially just when everyone had finally been relaxing and thinking he had left Kilglenn for richer pastures.

  But tonight it was not the devil’s footsteps Declan and Colm could hear coming towards them through the warm, scented May twilight. It was Colm’s cousin, Romilly.

  Her hair was dishevelled and streaming out behind her like copper silk, and her small face was tear-smudged. She ran up to them, gasping for breath, clutching Colm’s hands.

  ‘What’s happened? Romilly, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Sit down and tell us,’ said Declan, fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief.

  ‘I was mad ever to agree,’ said Romilly, sobbing into the handkerchief. ‘I know I was mad. But he was persuasive, you know. The silver tongue of the devil, isn’t that what they all say about him?’

  ‘Say about who? Rom, stop crying and tell us properly.’

  The story came out in hiccupping sobs, with frequent recourses to Declan’s handkerchief, and many self-reproaches. She had been walking on the cliff side that very afternoon, said Romilly. Yes, she knew it was a stupid thing to be going up to that stretch of the cliff, but there were times you wanted to be on your own, away from everyone and everything.

  This was understandable. Romilly had had to live with a series of her father’s people ever since her parents died in the influenza outbreak four years back. Even Declan’s mother, who disapproved of most girls on principle, said it was a disgrace the way Romilly Rourke was passed around like a lost parcel.

  Anyway, said Romilly, wiping away a fresh batch of tears, she had gone up to the cliff side and that was where she had met him.

  For a moment the two boys thought after all this was going to be a new episode in the story of the devil walking the Moher Cliffs, but in fact it was not the devil whom Romilly had encountered, although Declan said afterwards it might have been the devil’s apostle.

  It was Nicholas Sheehan. The disgraced priest who lived in mysterious seclusion in the old watchtower; the rebel hermit and the sinner (opinions were always divided on that point), whom legend said had challenged the devil to a chess game, and had won.

  ‘He was walking on the cliffs as well,’ said Romilly. ‘It would have been rude not to say good afternoon, so I did. And we were quite near to the watchtower path, and he started talking to me about it. How it was built by a High King of Tara on the highest point he could find to watch for enemies. But how it was made very grand to impress the ladies of the court.’

  ‘Nick Sheehan would know about trying to impress ladies,’ said Colm caustically, at which Romilly began to cry all over again.

  Father Sheehan – always supposing he still had any right to that title – had apparently suggested Romilly come up to the watchtower there and then. From the topmost window there was a marvellous view, he said. Why, on a clear day such as this one, you could almost imagine you were seeing all the way across to America. And even if they could not see America, Miss Rourke could take a look at the inside of the watchtower. Some of the stones were at least a thousand years old, and said by some to possess the magical arts of the long-ago High Kings. And there were books – all kind of curious and strange books, and some of those were believed to possess magical powers as well.

  Declan and Colm exchanged a look, but did not speak.

  ‘So I went,’ said Romilly.

  ‘You did? You went all the way up the path to the tower?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And . . . you went inside?’ said Declan. Neither of the boys knew anyone who had actually gone inside the watchtower.

  ‘I did,’ said Romilly again. ‘But it’s no use asking me what it’s like, because all I can remember is a room with light coming in through slitted windows – the kind of light you never saw before, so thin and pure you’d imagine you could cup it in your hands. And there were chairs and tables and everywhere was hung with silk and velvet. But I don’t remember much more because he gave me a glass of wine and when I drank it I felt a bit – I don’t know how to describe it – as if my mind didn’t belong to my body any longer. And the next thing I knew we were lying on a bed – all velvets and silks, you’d never see anything finer if you toured the world. Cushions with gold tassels and all.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Colm. ‘Never mind the cushions, Romilly, tell me you got up and came home and that old villain didn’t do anything to you.’

  ‘I didn’t come home,’ said Romilly, beginning to cry all over again. ‘I sat on the bed and he got on to it next to me, and he took off my clothes and then he took off his own clothes – well, I mean he took some off and unbuttoned others so he could—’

  ‘We don’t need to know that part,’ said Declan hastily, not able to bear the image of Nick Sheehan, who must be forty at least, for God’s sake, removing and unbuttoning in order to enable him to take Romilly’s virginity.

  For the virginity, it was now plain, had been well and truly taken.

  ‘It hurt,’ said Romilly, wrapping her arms around her body and shivering. ‘I didn’t know it’d hurt. You’d think they’d tell us that, wouldn’t you? When we’re being told we mustn’t do it before we’re married, I mean. You’d think they’d warn us it hurts, so we’d never want to do it anyway. It hurt a lot.’

  As she said this she sent a sideways glance at the two boys – it would have been overstating it to call the glance sly, but they had the brief uncomfortable impression that Romilly was looking to see how they were taking her story and whether they were ready to proffer sympathy.

  But clearly this was grossly unfair because obviously Romilly had suffered the ultimate disgrace for a girl. Declan and Colm sat for a long time with the sun setting in wild splendour over the ocean, Romilly telling the story over and over again. They both tried not to notice that more details were being added with each retelling.

  ‘I won’t stay in Kilglenn now,’ said Romilly, sitting forward on the grass and hugging her knees with her arms. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why? No one need ever know what happened,’ said Declan.

  ‘But what if there’s a child? There might be. Because,’ said Romilly with a display of knowledge that was as embarrassing to the two boys as it was unexpected, ‘he didn’t stop doing it to me before he . . . you know, the part that makes a baby.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Colm, and Romilly, with unprecedented sharpness, said:

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t blaspheme so much, Colm. It’s a sin to blaspheme.’

  ‘It’s a sin to rape innocent girls,’ said Colm. ‘That’s enough to make the saints blaspheme.’

  ‘And it’s no use saying no one need know,’ said Romilly. ‘He knows. I’ll never be able to look him in the eye after today.’


  ‘You don’t need to look him in the eye. You don’t need ever to see him,’ said Declan.

  ‘You can’t run away,’ said Colm. ‘Where would you go? What about money?’

  ‘I’d go to England,’ said Romilly. ‘And I can do it, because Nicholas Sheehan gave me some presents. Not money because he doesn’t have money. But he has jewelled cups and silver platters and things like that.’ It came out defiantly. ‘He gave me some. He said I could sell them for a lot of money, and that I was a good and pretty girl and I deserved to have a reward.’

  Colm, his eyes furious, said, ‘I won’t let you go.’

  ‘You can’t stop me. No one will miss me – I’m supposed to move on to the next lot of family next week anyhow. They’ll just think I’ve gone early, and they won’t bother to find out. I dare say they’ll be glad I’ve gone, because I don’t really fit anywhere, do I?’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t just go, Rom—’

  ‘I can. I’ll leave a note saying that’s what I’ve done,’ said Romilly. ‘And I’ll go on Sunday when everyone’s at Mass.’

  ‘I’m not letting her go,’ said Colm, after they had walked with Romilly to her house and made sure she had gone inside primed with a story about tumbling down on the cliff path to account for her tear-stained face and general dishevelment.

  ‘How will you stop her?’

  ‘I’ll confront bloody Nick Sheehan, the old villain,’ said Colm, his eyes lighting up. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll force him to leave Kilglenn for good. Then Romilly can stay.’

  ‘How would you force him to leave?’ said Declan.

  ‘I’ll say if he doesn’t go, I’ll bring Father O’Brian and the entire village out to the watchtower to throw him out,’ said Colm, his eyes glowing with angry fervour. ‘Like when they used to march a harlot out of the town with the rough music playing.’

  The word ‘harlot’ was not often used nowadays and nobody had heard rough music played in Kilglenn for at least fifty years. Fintan, when the poteen got to him, sometimes spun a tale of how, as a boy, he had helped run a painted Jezebel out of Kilglenn, and described how the banging of saucepans and tinkers’ pots had been as satisfying a sound as Gabriel blowing his trumpet on Judgement Day. Everyone enjoyed this story, although most people felt that for Fintan to berate painted Jezebels was a clear case of poacher turned gamekeeper, for the old rascal had broken just about every commandment during his life, with particular attention to the seventh.