The Sin Eater

by Sarah Rayne

  There had been three cuttings – he remembered that quite clearly. But a fourth lay near the wall, as if it had been dislodged from the desk when he had tumbled into that sinister unconsciousness. Benedict hesitated, then saw it was much more recent than the 1890s pieces, so it could not have anything to do with Declan. It would be quite safe to read it.

  The cutting was dated twelve years earlier and had been clipped from what looked like a semi-provincial newspaper, covering this part of North London. It was an account of the inquest findings on the death of his parents and his grandfather. With the sense that a different shard of the past was spiking into his mind, Benedict began to read.

  TRIPLE DEATH TRAGEDY

  Small inner mystery within multiple fatality

  A verdict of death by misadventure was today recorded on the three people who died in a dramatic road smash at the height of the recent freezing blizzards that brought most of the country to a standstill last month.

  Jonathan Doyle (34), his wife Emma (31), and Jonathan’s father, Patrick (82), died when the car being driven by Jonathan skidded from the road and crashed into a brick wall. No other vehicles were involved, and the coroner said it could be assumed, with reasonable certainty, that the treacherous conditions were the cause of the crash.

  However, two witnesses who had been travelling some distance behind the Doyles’ car, stated, independently, that they had seen a pedestrian in the road, who had seemed to be walking towards the doomed car. Both described the figure as male, wearing a long dark coat.

  ‘I thought he must be drunk,’ said one of the witnesses. ‘He seemed to weave in and out of the blizzard, very uncertainly.’

  The second witness told our reporter afterwards that she thought the man might have been confused or have mental problems. ‘Because no one in their right mind would walk down the centre of a main road in a raging blizzard, would they?’ she said. ‘No one would even be out in that weather if they could help it. We were only travelling ourselves because my daughter had just had her first child.’

  The coroner told the court that police had tried to trace the unknown man, but had not been able to do so. No hospitals, nursing homes or retirement homes had reports of a patient missing, and there had been no accidents involving a pedestrian in the area.

  The small inner mystery of the unknown man who appears to have caused these three deaths, then to have vanished, remains unsolved.

  Benedict stared at the cutting, his mind tumbling with confusion. They saw him, he thought. Those two people saw Declan. I’m not ill – I’m not suffering from that dissociative personality condition – I’m being bloody haunted! It can’t be coincidence. It must have been Declan. He deliberately caused them to swerve and crash. But why?

  For the first time he reached for Declan with his mind, but there was nothing. And that’s exactly like you! thought Benedict angrily. To step back into whatever shadowy world you inhabit, just when I start asking awkward questions. But I’m still not taking this as proof that you’re haunting me. I’ll need more than this.

  He put the cutting in the envelope with the others, then, with an air of decision, took the solicitor’s package of Holly Lodge’s deeds from his bag. If he was going to look for proof, he would start with the house and its owners.

  The legal phrases and familiar headings steadied him. This is what I know, thought Benedict. This is the kind of thing I’ve been studying for the last two years. Property law and the rights of ownership and the complexities of land transfer.

  Holly Lodge, it seemed, had been built in 1820. There was a record of the purchase of some land by a Mr Simcox, described as an importer of fine teas. Benedict imagined a genial gentleman, making a modest success in business, building himself a fine new house in a smart part of London, indulgently tolerant of his wife’s aspirations.

  A proliferation of later Simcoxes seemed to have inherited the place after the importer’s death, but they appeared to be a weakly breed, because there were five separate deeds of transfer, and each time a note was appending saying, ‘On the death of Alfred – on the demise of Octavius – of Leviticus – the freehold messuage and lands known as Holly Lodge in the district of Highbury, County of London, were transferred absolutely . . .’

  Benedict liked seeing how a house was passed down in a family or – in this case – passed across, from elder brother to younger brother, or perhaps cousin. It was interesting as well to see reference to the old geographical boundaries of London – there had been no Inner London in those days. He spared a moment to consider this, then turned to the next document.

  This was an H.M. Land Registry certificate, stating that the land on which Holly Lodge stood had been registered in 1870 when the last of the Simcoxes had sold the house to a Mr Aloysius Totteridge, described as an accountant. Clipped to this was a further transfer of title, dated 1888, recording that on the death of Aloysius, his entire estate, including Holly Lodge, had passed to his widow.

  Mrs Florence Totteridge.

  So she was real, thought Benedict, sitting back. The raddled harridan who ushered hopeful and priapic gentlemen to the bedrooms of Cerise and Romilly and several others, was real. But does that mean the rest of it’s real? That stuff about sin-eating and the watchtower?

  The murders had been real, though. Declan had already killed one man, and if those newspaper accounts could be trusted, there were four more still to be killed.

  He closed the bureau, thrust the Deeds back into his bag and went down the stairs and out into the street.

  Michael’s Oxford career to date had not included tracking down elusive Irish priests, whose provenance seemed dubious and whose probity was certainly questionable, but if Father Nicholas Sheehan had existed, it should be possible to find him. If he could not do so at Oxford, where research into arcane byways of the past was the norm, he might as well give up.

  The start of Oriel College’s Hilary Term was, as he had told Benedict, a bit crowded. Michael was caught up with energizing his students after the exigencies of their various Christmas festivities, and with the demands of his editor for Wilberforce’s various adventures, and it was a week before he could focus properly on Benedict’s story.

  He began by way of Oxford’s Theology Faculty, strayed into the Ian Ramsey and the MacDonald Research Centres as a matter of course, (both of which proved to be dead ends), and found his way to the Faculty’s library in St Giles. He liked St Giles and he liked the library, which had a pleasingly unassuming air.

  It was eleven o’clock. He would work for two hours, then have lunch in one of the nearby restaurants that scattered this part of Oxford. Several had looked interesting – he and Nell might have a meal here sometime.

  The time passed without him noticing it. He was not on very familiar ground, and he wound a tangled path through learned treatises on the Old Testament, the New Testament, and on Doctrines and Ethics of various flavours and persuasions. It was all no doubt deeply interesting, but it was not what he wanted. He wanted books listing ordained priests – almanacs and year books and directories. Even privately printed memoirs from obscure and long-defunct parishes and people.

  Then, shortly after twelve, he found a bookcase tucked in a corner of one of the rooms with twelve editions of Thom’s Irish Almanacs. They reposed on the lowest shelf, neatly stacked in date order, and the dates ranged from 1860 to 1899. If Nicholas Sheehan had existed, according to Owen he would be recorded in Thom. Michael seized the books, disturbing a cloud of dust and dispossessing half a dozen indignant spiders of their homes, and carried them, armful by armful, to the quiet reading room before they could vanish and render Nicholas Sheehan as ethereal as ever.

  At first he thought he was not going to find anything. He leafed through pages upon pages of entries, poring over the small print until his eyes ached. The lists were arranged alphabetically, which was one mercy, and there were columns showing the date of each priest’s ordination, the place where he had actually been ordained and, in a few case
s, a name indicating who the presiding bishop had been.

  By the time Michael reached the 1860s, he was almost prepared to give up, and he was certainly in a mood to throw the estimable Alexander Thom and his entire works across the floor.

  And then, quite suddenly, there it was. Nicholas Luke Sheehan. Admitted to St Patrick’s Monastery near Galway in 1870, where his Abbot had been Fergal McMahon. In September 1874, Nicholas Sheehan had been admitted to Holy Orders by Bishop John Delaney.

  He existed, thought Michael. And it all fits – the dates, the name. But one of the basic rules of research was to find at least two primary sources, so he made notes of everything, then headed for the index section. This was mostly on computer, and Michael keyed in a request for any material on Abbot Fergal McMahon of St Patrick’s Monastery, and Bishop John Delaney.

  There was nothing on the Bishop, but the request for the Abbot turned up one entry.

  Memoirs of an Irish Monastic Life. Fergal McMahon, Order of St Benedict. Father Abbot of St Patrick’s Monastery, in the County of Galway. Privately printed by the Irish Catholic Press, 1904.

  The book won’t be here, thought Michael, scribbling down the reference numbers. It’ll be long since pulped. Or it’ll be on long-term loan to some absent-minded academic who’s studying nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism, and lost it weeks ago. Or – here’s a likelier scenario – it won’t be the right Fergal McMahon, because how many Fergals and how many McMahons must there be in Ireland? And how many monasteries dedicated to St Patrick! But what if it is the right person? What if this is the man who knew Nicholas Sheehan and saw him through training for the priesthood? And then, in later life, wrote his memoirs, perhaps referring to some of the ordinands in his care? No, he thought. It won’t be. Of course it won’t.

  But it was. There in the flyleaf was a short introduction written by Abbot Fergal himself.

  ‘In my life of service to God I came across many interesting people and events,’ the Abbot had written. ‘I believe it to be but a small indulgence to make a record of my life before He calls me, and trust I have done so with brevity, modesty and clarity and that my memories will be of value and interest.

  ‘A cautionary note: the tale related in Chapter Ten of these pages is anonymous as to the name of the participant. However, it is a true tale and should serve as a warning to the inquisitive. The devil’s lures are everywhere.’

  Michael turned to Chapter Ten. As was customary for that era, there was a subheading, describing the section’s contents. This read: ‘My difficult decision over one of my ordinands – N.S.’s ill-starred association with the man known as the Wicked Earl of Kilderry’.

  Michael read this twice, foraged in his wallet for his reader’s ticket, and checked the book out on loan. After this he carried Fergal McMahon and his monastic memories back to Oriel College.

  His rooms were cold because he had forgotten to switch on the thermostat. He remedied this, put the Abbot’s memoirs temporarily in a drawer where Wilberforce could not get at them, and closed the door on the world. Then he checked his diary, seeing with relief that he had no tutorials until five that evening, and headed for the kitchen to heat some soup for a belated lunch. While it was warming up, he lured Wilberforce off a pile of third-year essays on stanzaic form by means of opening a tin of Wilberforce’s favourite cat food. After this, he sat down at his desk and took Fergal McMahon’s book from the drawer.

  It took all of his carefully acquired academic discipline not to turn straight to Chapter Ten and the tale of N.S. and the Wicked Earl. Instead, forcing his mind to a scholarly detachment, he opened the book at the start, putting a notebook and pen to hand so he could write down any pertinent names or places.

  To the accompaniment of Wilberforce wolfing down jellied tuna and herring chunks, he began to read Fergal McMahon’s memoirs.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘It was a great source of pleasure that the small, quite obscure monastery I helped found grew to be such a wonderful place for God’s work,’ wrote Fergal McMahon. ‘On the day in the early 1860s when we first opened the doors, our total funds amounted to one shilling [editor’s note: an Irish shilling is equivalent to a British shilling], but years later, during the Great Famine, we were able to help many unfortunate people.’

  The writing was vivid and lively, although Michael found the depictions of the Great Famine somewhat depressing. The Abbot conscientiously described for his readers the memories of his youth – the grey, hopeless faces of the farmers and what he referred to as ‘the peasantry’, as they saw their crops fail year after year. Michael had just reached a description of the pervasive stench of potatoes rotting in the ground – ‘And the putrefaction fumes strong enough to stay in your nostrils for days’ – when there was a sound of angry hissing from the kitchen and the smell of burning. He dived into the kitchen to rescue the pan of soup, which he had forgotten about, and which had boiled down to an unpleasant brown mess, with mushrooms stuck to the sides. Michael swore, switched off the cooker, left the pan to cool, and returned to Fergal who was now describing the exodus of so many Irish families, and applying considerably more optimism.

  ‘They went off to seek their fortunes in other lands, and there’d generally be a bit of a craic the night before they set off,’ wrote the Abbot, and Michael was about to search his shelves for a Celtic dictionary, because craic sounded like a lobster recipe which surely could not be right, when he realized it was an Irish word for party.

  ‘Jars of poteen always circulated freely,’ explained Fergal, who sounded as if he might have partaken fairly robustly of the poteen himself. ‘And most of it supplied by that rascal Fintan Reilly from Kilglenn.’

  Fintan again, thought Michael. Eithne mentioned him, as well – in fact it sounded as if she’d had a love affair with him, not to mention a couple of children. This was not conclusive – Ireland’s west coast was probably littered with people named Fintan – but Declan’s story had also referred to Fintan, so this seemed to provide another shred of evidence in favour of Benedict’s odd visions being real.

  ‘But no one much cared if they were caught drinking poteen, and them off to Dublin the next day, bound for England on the Liverpool ferry, although they’d have a dreadful old journey below decks in steerage. They didn’t care about that though, for their sights were set on the glittering cities of America. Ah, America – “Wide as Shakespeare’s soul, sublime as Milton’s immemorial theme, and rich as Chaucer’s speech”,’ wrote Fergal, enclosing the sentence in quotation marks so that Michael, delighted with the Abbot’s exuberant rhetoric, wrote the words down to trace to their source later.

  ‘It was not everyone who was bound for America, though,’ continued the Abbot. ‘The streets of London, paved with the fabled gold of legend, also drew my countrymen. I was never in London in my life, although I believe it was a fine sight with all the splendid streets and shops and palaces, and the Queen riding past in her carriage.

  ‘St Patrick’s Monastery was growing apace and after four years we were delighted we could open a seminary for young men called to serve God as priests. There was much contentment in shaping these eager souls, some scarcely more than eighteen, for service in God.

  ‘And then the young man I shall refer to only as N.S. came to us in 1870, and although I could not have known it at the time, his arrival heralded the reawakening of an ancient evil.’

  ‘N.S,’ thought Michael. Will it be Nicholas Sheehan or not? It must be. He read on.

  It was Autumn when N.S. came to St Patrick’s. A bronze October morning, scented with rain and chrysanthemums – the kind of morning when I always felt God was smiling.

  I never knew N.S’s parentage, but we all thought he was from the old aristocracy. A bastard son of some ancient line, perhaps. Not that these things matter.

  He was a good-looking boy, dark-haired, with a glint of arrogance about him, and eyes the colour of the ocean – that clear grey you so seldom see, rimmed with black. But the day he walked throug
h our doors, I thought, “Oh my, we’re going to have trouble with this one.”

  Even so, for the four years of his studies he was a diligent and biddable student. But I think – no, I am sure – that there were nights when he slipped out of the monastery and made his way to one of the little nearby towns. Ladies were what he sought, of course, and with the way he looked, I dare say he’d have little trouble attracting them. Ah well, once upon a time I was not entirely blameless in that direction myself. As a young man in the seminary in Dublin, I, too, struggled with the vow of chastity, and I did not always win the fight.

  As well as charm and good looks, N.S. possessed imagination, and that’s a dangerous thing in a priest. A little is fine and good. Too much and your man starts to believe in the medieval tales of demons, and of horned and cloven creatures crawling and trawling the world for souls. Those creatures were made-up stories – weapons to keep people within the Church’s teachings, of course. I never believed in them myself.

  I believe in evil, though. It was planted in the world long before men walked in it, and it’s still there, deeply buried but lethal, like the iron-jawed snares farmers set for predators. Take a wrong step, and snap! you’re caught in Satan’s mantrap. He’s a sneaky, subtle creature, the Prince of Darkness, and his evil can tear lives apart and shred souls.

  It was Fintan Reilly who started the black chain of events. Whether Fintan could actually read or write I never knew, and perhaps it doesn’t matter, for he could paint a picture with words the like of which you never heard. And on a night in 1878, when I was still a relatively young man, Fintan painted a picture that harrowed up my soul to its very marrow.’

  Michael, coming up out of Fergal McMahon’s world, was starting to suspect that the Abbot might have missed his vocation – that he should have pursued a career writing nineteenth-century gothic fiction. So far there was nothing in the memoirs that provided any working facts – no place names or firm dates that could be tracked to their source. He was undecided whether to show this account to Benedict Doyle. He did not precisely think Fergal was making this up, but he was keeping in mind Owen Bracegirdle’s comment about the Irish being the storytellers of the world.