The Sin Eater

by Sarah Rayne

  I’m glad you came, Nell . . .

  He was there, standing on the half landing, lit from behind by the narrow window, looking down at her. Nell’s heart performed a somersault, and excitement laced with apprehension coursed through her.

  In as normal a voice as she could manage, she said, ‘Hello. How did you get in?’ Then, as he did not reply, she said, ‘You were here the day Benedict was taken ill, weren’t you? You were with him when I found him.’

  Still he did not say anything. Nell waited, seeing that even standing outside the lamp’s glow, he was exactly as she remembered him. The eyes, the dark hair, the way he had of tilting his head as if he was listening very intently. If he would come down just two or three stairs, she would be able to see him properly.

  But he stayed where he was, and from feeling uneasy, Nell began to feel frightened, because she was in an empty house with a complete stranger, and she had no idea how he had got in. Did he have a key? Had he been hiding somewhere, waiting to creep out? That was surely not the action of a sane person and clearly it would be as well to make a polite, but swift retreat. Trying to avoid any sudden action that might spark off something unpleasant, she began to move cautiously back down to the hall, feeling for the stairs with her foot, not daring to take her eyes from the man.

  There were only a few stairs to the bottom; once she was there she could be across the hall and opening the door – she had not locked it. She held on to the banister with one hand and went down two more steps. Was he going to follow her? No, he was staying on the half-landing. Good. And here was the last step. Now for a quick sprint to the door . . .

  It was not the last step. She had miscalculated and there were three more to go. There was a moment when Nell tried to stop herself falling, but she fell hard against the edge of the banister, banging her head with such force that lights splintered across her vision. There was a moment of blurred dizziness, then she was aware of lying in a painful jumble on a hard tiled floor. The world was still spinning, but the jagged lights seemed to have retreated. Nell drew in a shaky breath, but the blow to her head seemed to be still echoing inside her brain, and she was not entirely sure what had happened or where she was. She tried to sit up, but the dizziness seized her again and a sickening pain shot through her ankle. Sprained ankle and bang on the head? Whatever had happened she could not lie here like this – there was something she had to do, only she could not quite pin down what it was . . .

  She had been cataloguing some house contents – an old shadowy house – something for Nina Doyle, was it? Yes, Holly Lodge, that was it. Was she still in the house? She must be – she could hear a muddled sound of traffic nearby.

  Nell made a huge effort and this time managed to half sit up. She was in a big hall, lying at the foot of a wide stairway with a carved banister. Shadows clustered in the corners, but a table lamp was casting a pool of light – she remembered switching that on. Had she been about to go up to the bedrooms? And fallen down the stairs? Whatever she had done, she could not possibly get to the tube like this – her ankle was sending out waves of wrenching pain and she was not sure if she could stand on it, never mind walk. Could she manage to get out to the street, though? The traffic sounded quite heavy – there would surely be taxis.

  Taxis. Traffic.

  It was then that Nell began to think the bang on her head might have affected her hearing, because the traffic did not sound quite right. It sounded more like wheels rattling over uneven ground than cars whizzing along a London street. In addition, she could hear voices and music, and these did not sound right, either. Oh God, thought Nell, I’m suffering from concussion or something – I’m hearing things. But there was nothing odd about hearing traffic and voices in the middle of London. Except there was something very strange about the sounds. The voices were speaking English, but it was an odd, unfamiliar English. Sharper, with different emphasis on words and different vowel sounds. It was speech that Nell thought confusedly she should recognize. If the pain in her foot would ease and if she could overcome the sick dizziness, she might be able to think more clearly.

  And then quite suddenly, the spinning fragments of sound and memory fell into place, like the colours in a child’s kaleidoscope, and with a cold feeling of panic Nell knew what she was hearing. It was the speech of the nineteenth century. It was the street patois that long-dead authors had reproduced for readers. She was hearing the raucous calls Charles Dickens had written for his beggars and urchins, and the speech Conan Doyle assigned to the Baker Street Irregulars when they related their findings to Sherlock Holmes . . .

  No, of course it was not. She was confused from the fall and the pain of her sprained ankle, and there was probably a party of angry foreigners out there – maybe tourists whose minibus had broken down.

  But the sounds came again, more vividly, and with them was the memory of something someone had said recently. Memory clicked a little more firmly into place. Benedict Doyle had talked to her about researching crime from the end of the nineteenth century and he had said London would sound different. It’s always noisy, he had said, but it would have been noisy in a different way. Hansom cabs rattling over the cobblestones, and people shouting and quarrelling.

  That’s what I’m hearing, thought Nell. Those are wooden wheels bumping over unpaved surfaces – and horses’ hooves. And that music . . .

  Overstrung, out-of-tune pianos played in smoky pubs. It was exactly what the music sounded like. But it could not be that. It must be somebody’s radio or television with a Victorian play on it. Something with particularly good sound effects. Please let it be that.

  Very slowly she turned her head to the door that led to the drive and out to the street. Even the light was different. And if she could reach that door and open it, what would she see?

  Open it, Nell . . . Take a look at my world . . . Just a glimpse, where it’s trickling into your mind from mine . . .

  The final shards of fragmented memory dropped into place and Nell turned to look at the stair. Declan, the man of shadows and mystery, who had somehow compelled her to come here.

  He began to move down the stairs and, as he reached the lower stairs, he stepped into the edge of the light from the lamp. He drew back at once, putting up a defensive hand, but it was too late. Nell gasped, because his face, oh God, his face . . . What had done that to his face?

  She managed to scrabble a couple of feet towards the door, because surely if she could open it and call for help, someone would hear her. Someone in that alien street? The street that was filled with the sound of horses’ hooves and wooden wheels clattering over cobblestones and people shouting in a form of English that no one in the twenty-first century had heard . . .

  But Declan’s hands were reaching for her, and his eyes were no longer the piercing blue she remembered; they were black, huge, like the eyes of some monstrous insect . . .

  He came down the last few stairs, and bent over her. As he pulled her to her feet, severe pain twisted through her injured foot, and Nell tumbled all the way down into complete unconsciousness.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Benedict had intended to be back at the flat to see Nell before she set off for Holly Lodge, but on the way back from buying his newspaper he had looked in at a second-hand bookshop, where he had become absorbed in several books about Victorian street life. Among them was a dictionary of Victorian colloquialisms, titled ‘Slang, Cant and Flash Phrases’, which he thought might be useful for his essay on Victorian crimes. It was battered and foxed, but it was full of what appeared to be genuine nineteenth-century jargon, and Benedict bartered happily with the bookseller, whose day would have been ruined if a customer paid up without challenge, then walked slowly back to the flat, thumbing through the pages.

  It meant Nell had left when he got back, but Nina was there, still putting together her Silver Wedding dinner. She told Benedict she was disgustingly behind schedule, and if he had nothing else to do, could he possibly lend a hand, because at this rate the du
ck à la Montmorency would not be ready for the clients’ Golden Wedding, never mind the Silver one.

  It was twelve o’clock before Nina finally bore the duck portions off, and Benedict switched on the laptop to work on his essay. Most of what he had written so far was still in note form, but he thought it was a fairly good outline of what he meant to do. As he started to type, he wondered how Nell was getting on at Holly Lodge and if she had found anything valuable. Like tell-all diaries signed by Declan and dated c.1898? his mind said cynically.

  But he was not going to think about Declan. He was becoming convinced that the medical explanation was right, and that it was probably better to suffer from multiple personality disorder – and have proper pills to keep it in its place – than to suffer from some peculiar form of possession by a set of ghosts. Declan had existed, of course, and Benedict might some day track down the registration of his birth or death. But apart from finding Flossie Totteridge’s name on the Title Deeds of Holly Lodge, there was nothing to indicate that anyone else in that wild tale had ever lived. And most likely Benedict had seen Flossie’s name written down somewhere – probably in Holly Lodge that day of his parents’ funeral – and it had lodged in his subconscious.

  With last night’s conversation with Nell still fresh in his mind, he set about describing the backdrop to the crimes he would be examining. How England in general and London in particular would have looked and sounded; how people would have talked. He reached for ‘Slang, Cant and Flash Phrases’ again, and began delightedly typing in the colourful phrases from the 1880s and 1890s, wondering what the cracksmen and magsmen and dollymops would make of today’s expressions. What would they think if they heard us saying it was a night when many stars were present? thought Benedict. Or talking about emailing on a BlackBerry, or texting somebody? He smiled, and worked on, enjoying the vivid language of the Victorian streets, and the famous rhyming slang, traces of which were still around today.

  And the chaunters and the penny gaffs and mobsmen, Benedict . . .

  Chaunters. Benedict had come across references to penny gaffs which seemed to have been low-class theatres, and also of mobsmen – well-dressed swindlers. But chaunters? He reached for the book again, but the expression was not listed. Then he must have seen it or heard it somewhere else. Research was magpie-ism and serendipity anyway. He typed another couple of paragraphs, but he was feeling as if something invisible had plucked lightly at strings in his mind, and as if his mind was still thrumming gently.

  Chaunters. He would do a web search in a minute. It sounded as if it might be singing.

  Singing, for sure, Benedict . . . They sang for money, the chaunters . . . The first time we heard them was down by the river, with the fog like diseased smoke so a man couldn’t see his way. And we thought we were hearing the voices of the Sidhe who’d call to you from beneath the sea, but it was chaunters, inside a tavern, earning their supper . . .

  ‘Will you just sod off?’ said Benedict out loud, and felt Declan’s ruffle of amusement.

  It’s the truth I’m telling you, said Declan. And there was one night down by the river . . . The silvery threads of thought stopped suddenly, and for the first time Benedict felt a hesitation and a withdrawal. Then Declan said, Oh, what the hell, you know most of it already . . . Listen now, on the night we found Harold Bullfinch—

  ‘Who?’ said Benedict, before he could stop himself.

  Haven’t you been paying attention to anything? Harold Bullfinch was the abortionist, the black-hearted villain who killed Romilly . . .

  Romilly. Romilly, who had red hair and who had run away from Kilglenn after Nicholas Sheehan seduced her in the old watchtower on the Moher Cliffs. How could I have forgotten Romilly? thought Benedict.

  On the night we found Bullfinch’s body, the chaunters were singing in the taverns by the river . . . And, oh God, Benedict, it was so cold and dank in those streets, and it was so lonely to stand outside the taverns . . . Wanting to go in and have a bit of cheer and the company of others . . . But we didn’t dare do that, not till we had the jacket back . . .

  The river fog was everywhere. It muffles everything – you wouldn’t know that, would you, for you’ve almost got rid of fog in your clean modern world. But when you walked through one of those old fogs you’d feel as if you’d fallen into another world altogether. And it was a frightening world, Benedict, you can’t know how frightening it was . . .

  London 1890s

  Declan and Colm could scarcely see their way after they left the cab and walked through the fog-shrouded streets to where they had left Harold Bullfinch’s body.

  ‘But we have to do this,’ Colm said. ‘If anyone finds your jacket they’ll know who you are and half the police in London will be hunting you as a killer.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Bullfinch,’ said Declan, but he still felt strange and unconnected to the world, which he thought was because of falling down the river steps and knocking himself out. He was not, in fact, convinced that he was entirely conscious yet; walking at Colm’s side, the world had an unreal quality, in which he could only remember fragments of what had been happening during the last few hours.

  And then a sliver of very recent memory dropped into place, and he said, ‘Colm, you said you were at Holly Lodge all of today.’

  ‘I was. With that voracious harpy, Floss Totteridge.’

  ‘But I saw you,’ said Declan. ‘You were out here. I saw you crossing the road on the corner of Clock Street.’ He stopped and turned to face Colm. The fog swirled thickly around them, but a disc of blurred light from a street gas lamp touched Colm’s face with colour.

  ‘I went to Bidder Lane,’ said Colm, after a moment. ‘To the house where Romilly lived.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought there might be some of her things there. I wasn’t going to leave them for that harridan to sell. But I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to think I was a moonstruck simpleton.’

  Declan did not say they had both always been a bit moonstruck by Romilly. He said, ‘Were there any of her things there?’

  ‘A rosary and a crucifix wrapped in a bit of silk.’ Colm was walking on again, his hands dug deeply into his pockets, not looking at Declan. ‘I took those. Keepsakes.’

  Before Declan could say anything else, he pointed to the open door of a tavern on the corner of Clock Street and Bidder Lane. The music Declan dimly remembered hearing earlier was still going on – the jangly piano and voices raised in blurred song. Someone must have thrown open the door, because the scents of smoke and ale and hot food reached them.

  ‘God, wouldn’t you sell your soul to be able to go in there and be part of all that?’ said Colm, echoing Declan’s thoughts as he so often did.

  ‘I would. Like Fintan’s Bar at home, where we’d be recognized and welcomed, and it’d be a grand evening. Colm, couldn’t we go in . . . ?’

  ‘We could not. We have to rescue your jacket from the abortionist’s corpse before anyone finds it.’ Colm spoke sharply, but he put out a hand to Declan’s shoulder as he said it. ‘Come on, now, we’re almost at the river steps. If you pass out now, I’ll throw you in the river.’

  ‘If I pass out I’ll probably fall into the river without your help.’

  The river steps were as dank and eerie as Declan remembered. Here was the ledge stretching out along the quayside wall; even with the fog swirling everywhere he could make out the circular hole with the brick surround. He pointed to it, wanting to delay the moment until they had to approach Bullfinch’s body.

  ‘What would that be, d’you think?’

  ‘An overflow outlet of an old sewer, I should think. They’d have the – what is it called? – the effluence discharging into sewer pits inside there,’ said Colm. ‘When it reached a certain level, it’d overflow and gush out into the river.’

  ‘Effluence being a polite word for a load of shit?’

  ‘When was I ever polite?’ Colm had turned away from the sewer tunnel, and was looking
down the steps. ‘He’s still there,’ he said, in an expressionless voice. ‘Isn’t that a terrible thing for a man’s body to lie sodden and dead by itself. But your jacket’s there as well, that’s one mercy. Are you ready to sprint down those steps and snatch it up? We’ll have to be fast, because we don’t want to be recognized and we don’t know who might be watching.’

  ‘Watching, where from?’ said Declan, looking about him.

  ‘Anywhere. Those warehouses, barges on the river. Will you do the sprint, or will I?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Declan, and thought: I don’t need to look at what’s under the jacket. I don’t even need to think about it. Before he could change his mind, he was down the steps, snatching up the jacket, and racing back up again.

  ‘Good,’ said Colm, softly. ‘Very good indeed.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Back to the lodging. We’ll get a cab again.’

  ‘Can we afford it?’

  ‘Your man down there can,’ said Colm.

  ‘We’re still using his money?’

  ‘He doesn’t need it,’ said Colm.

  They spent an uncomfortable night in the narrow lodging house. Colm appeared to sleep, but Declan lay wakeful, watching the shadows dance on the ceiling, seeing them form into the outline of a twisted hunched figure lying on river steps. I didn’t do it, he thought. I didn’t kill him – I’d know if I had. But every time this denial formed, trailing it like an unquiet spectre, was the question: can you be sure?

  There were four other lodgers eating breakfast when they went downstairs next morning. There had been no introductions, but they had all shared meals during the last few days, and they had nodded in offhand friendship. Declan thought the men looked down on them; he thought they regarded himself and Colm as innocents, unschooled lambs who might be ripe for fleecing. Colm had said this was rubbish, and he and Declan were as good as anyone in London.