The Sin Eater

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Both of you went downstairs when you heard the cry, is that right?’ said the police constable, a short time later.

  ‘I got there first,’ said Declan.

  ‘I was a few minutes after him.’

  ‘And you were on your own in the house, apart from Miss Cerise.’ The policeman was slow of speech and portly of build, and was, in fact, the Walter Oliphant to whom Cerise had referred. ‘I’ve got her statement.’

  ‘The other girls were out at the time,’ said Colm, ‘but I think they’re all back now.’

  ‘I know they’re back,’ said Constable Oliphant, with considerable feeling. ‘I’ve got them penned up in their rooms, and they’re carrying on like one o’clock, sayin’ deceased ’ad been like a mother to them.’ He closed his notebook, and said the inspector would want to talk to Mr Rourke and Mr Doyle, but for the moment they were to remain where they were, was that clear?

  ‘It is. Could we get a cup of tea while we wait, though?’ said Colm. ‘For I have a powerful thirst and it’s been a long time since breakfast.’

  Constable Oliphant saw no reason to deny this modest request; in fact he saw no reason why everyone in the house should not have a cup of tea. It might even, he said, plodding off to find a suitable female to set a kettle to boil, serve to shut up the wailing females.

  By the time the tea had been made and a tray of mugs carried in to the wailing damsels (who demanded it be laced with gin to counteract the shock), the inspector had arrived and Colm was Colm again, his eyes normal. He was polite and articulate. Asked their reason for being in the house, he said he and Declan were renting a bed for a night or two.

  ‘And we’d be glad if you wouldn’t tell our families over in Ireland, for they’d be horrified to learn we have a cousin running a bawdy house. Well, we were horrified ourselves, weren’t we, Declan? Shocked to our toes, the both of us.’

  ‘Mrs Totteridge was your cousin?’

  ‘It’s so distant a connection I couldn’t even begin to trace it,’ said Colm smoothly, and Declan saw Colm was handing the inspector a mixture of truth and lies. He could not decide if this was extremely clever or worryingly sly.

  ‘If she was a relative, however distant, accept of my condolences.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The inspector said he was bound to point out, Mr Rourke and Mr Doyle, that he would want to talk to them again. ‘There was that rumour of a man with an Irish accent seen near the scene of an earlier crime. And a very similar method of death, that was.’

  ‘You don’t really think we had anything to do with this murder?’ demanded Colm incredulously. ‘Because as God’s our witness, we never knew the lady until this last few days.’

  ‘I suspect everyone until I know to the contrary,’ said the inspector. ‘But you say you were together when you heard the cry, so for the moment I’m believing you. And if either of you killed Mrs Totteridge, I can’t for the life of me see why. You hadn’t met her until a few days ago and there doesn’t seem any motive for you to butcher the poor soul. Quite the reverse if she was giving you free board and lodging. And whoever did this is a madman – and you both seem perfectly sane to me.’

  ‘Oh, most of the Irish are half-mad, didn’t you know that?’ said Colm.

  ‘Is that so, sir? For the moment, I’ll ask you to remain here at the house. I’ll get the shipping company to confirm when you arrived in London.’

  ‘We came on the night ferry from Dublin to Liverpool,’ said Colm. ‘We can give you the date.’

  ‘We worked our way to London,’ put in Declan. ‘We can probably tell you the towns we came through.’

  ‘That would be helpful.’ The inspector made suitable notes, then said, ‘I’d have to say it’s in your favour that you’re still here. Most murderers, once they finish their work, make sure to be miles away. But you stayed.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t we stay?’ said Colm.

  ‘We have nothing to hide,’ put in Declan.

  ‘I think we’re safe, don’t you?’ said Colm, later that night.

  Declan mumbled a vague reply. He was finding it difficult to speak to Colm and he was finding it difficult even to look at Colm. He had no idea what to do, and he had no idea how he felt. He knew, deep within his bones and nerves and blood, that Colm had killed Flossie and also Harold Bullfinch – the latter out of anger and pain at Romilly’s death – the former possibly from a different kind of anger, because she had turned Romilly from the house when she got pregnant.

  But he was trying to ignore this feeling, and he was clinging to Cerise’s words about opium. He did not know very much about opium-smoking, but he knew it gave people strong delusions. If Colm had committed murder from within some opium-drenched nightmare, he could not be regarded as having been in his right mind.

  The next morning they discussed how long they would have to stay at Holly Lodge. Declan tentatively suggested they leave without anyone knowing – they could simply vanish into London’s anonymity, he said – but Colm strongly disagreed.

  ‘The inspector asked us to stay,’ he said. ‘It’d look very damning if we didn’t, and anyway they might track us down, and then we’d be in real trouble.’

  Declan had started to ask if the police were still in the house, when from outside their door, Cerise’s voice said, ‘Can I come in? I want to talk to you.’

  She was wearing a loosely fitting wrapper, and she sat on the edge of the bed and said, ‘I ain’t going to pretend or beat about the bush. When Floss, poor old cow, was killed, I was looking out of the window of my room.’

  ‘I thought you were with the Walrus Moustache,’ said Colm.

  ‘I was, but ’e takes a long time to get up a head of steam, if you follow me. He ain’t as manly as some. So we were trying it up against the wall – he thought it might help him, and blimey, we seemed to be there hours. But my window overlooks the drive and that jutting bit that’s the window of Floss’s sitting room as well, so I could see it clear as clear, all the time Arthur was puffing and sweating away. And,’ said Cerise, looking at them both very intently, ‘no one came next or nigh Floss’s window, and no one came down the drive to the house. I’d swear to that in a court of law if they asked me.’

  ‘I still don’t understand . . .’ began Declan.

  ‘No one came into the house,’ said Cerise, ‘because no one needed to. The killer was already inside.’ She sat back. ‘Now do you understand?’

  There was a silence, then Colm said, ‘That’s an extraordinary idea.’

  ‘Extraordinary or not, I got to thinking,’ said Cerise, ‘that it could mean there’d be someone in this house who’d be very grateful to me for not sayin’ anything about what I saw.’

  ‘About what you didn’t see, you mean.’

  ‘Secrets have an annoying way of getting out, don’t they? Of getting told to people.’

  ‘But if you know anything, you should tell the police,’ said Colm.

  ‘Huh, catch me tellin’ that lot anything,’ said Cerise at once. ‘No, I was thinking more of the gentlemen who come to this ’ouse. My friend who was here at the time, for instance—’

  ‘Arthur of the walrus moustache and the tardy manliness?’

  ‘Don’t you mock ’im. He’s in a very good way of business. Tea importers down Canonbury Road. And he’s likely to be made an alderman or some such. He’s setting a lot of store by that. He might not want ’is wife nor his ma-in-law knowin’ what he gets up to here, but it’s Lombard Street to a china orange that if he thought he could ’elp the police lay a murderer by the heels, he’d do it. If I told him I believed the murderer had been inside this ’ouse all the time – maybe was still here – I think he’d feel he had to tell the rozzers. Citizen’s duty, ’e’d call it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Colm slowly. ‘Yes, I see, although you’re jumping to a very wild conclusion, Cerise. But whatever story you’ve spun for yourself, neither of us want to be part of it. We have no money and anyway we haven’t done anything wrong.’<
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  ‘You’d been smoking opium,’ said Cerise. ‘I saw it by your eyes. People can do terrible things in the grip of opium, and they don’t always remember afterwards. So I wouldn’t judge a man for doing somethin’ – even somethin’ really bad – if he’d been in an opium dream when he did it. You understand that, do you?’ She waited, then, as neither of them answered, said in a harder voice, ‘But as for money, old Floss had a lot, all locked away. Hundreds of pounds it must be. She di’nt trust banks – she said they rooked you ten times over.’ She stood up. ‘And ’ooever killed the poor old trout could’ve got his hands on her money at the same time,’ she said. ‘Which means he could give me a very generous present for keeping this partickler secret. You think about that, both of you and I’ll come back later. Couple of hours maybe. I just heard St Stephen’s chime one o’clock when I came up here, so I’m going downstairs for a bit of dinner. Zelda an’ Ruby are bringing in some hot pies.’

  As Cerise went out of the room, an insouciant swing to her rump, Declan saw with a cold chill that Colm’s eyes were starting to darken to the swollen insect-black once more. He thought, Oh, Cerise, don’t go on with this, don’t . . .

  The present

  ‘Cerise, don’t go on with this, don’t . . .’

  It was several moments before Benedict realized it was no longer Declan’s voice he was hearing, but his own, and that he was in his own room in Nina’s flat.

  But Declan’s thoughts were still reverberating in his mind, and he found himself whispering them. Don’t go on with this, Cerise, don’t . . . Because, thought Benedict, if you do, you’ll be his third victim – he’ll need to silence you. He’ll never let himself be blackmailed, and he’s killed twice already.

  The newspaper articles had said all the victims except one had been found on river steps. Would Colm get Cerise out there to that disused sewer outlet? Perhaps he would ask her to meet him so he could give her the money with no prying eyes to see them.

  Benedict had no idea if he was thinking logically, and he was finding it difficult to think at all, because his head was aching as badly as if it was being forced wide open then smashed closed again. He felt slightly sick, but he found Nina’s paracetamol in the bathroom, and gulped down two. After this he splashed his face with cold water and felt a bit better.

  Cerise had been the third victim. There had been five altogether, according to the newspapers, and Benedict had already seen two of them killed. The abortionist Harold Bullfinch, and Flossie Totteridge. How had Colm arranged the meeting with Bullfinch?

  Stupid, said the soft voice. I sent the villainous old slug a note asking to meet him . . . I wrote that I had been told he could help a girl out of a ‘very particular kind of trouble’. He came to the river steps like a lamb.

  And over everything lay the explosive knowledge that it had not been Declan who killed those people. It had not been Benedict’s great-grandfather who stalked victims through London’s fogbound streets and butchered them. It had been Colm.

  And that being so, it must have been Colm who had haunted Benedict since he was eight years old. But why? What did Colm want from him?

  TWENTY-THREE

  The chiming of a clock somewhere close by broke into Benedict’s tumbling thoughts. The sound startled him, because it was odd to hear a clock chime; he did not remember ever hearing that in Nina’s flat before.

  He glanced at his watch and saw it was half past one. Then it must have been a half-hour chime he had heard. That fitted with what Cerise had said about it being one o’clock . . . No, that was Declan and Colm’s world. Oh God, was he starting to confuse the two? He absolutely must not do that. But the knowledge that Cerise had given Colm and Declan two hours to make a decision thudded a tattoo in his brain.

  He left a note for Nina, saying he would be back for supper, collected his coat and went out of the flat. Going down the stairs he was aware of a feeling of dislocation – almost as if his head had been divided into two. Perhaps it was the result of the paracetamol on top of the stuff the hospital people were giving him. When he got out to the street the pills seemed to be affecting his eyes as well, because the light seemed wrong. A heavy mist was muffling the traffic and shrouding the modern shop fronts, but leaving visible the older buildings. Perhaps there had been a factory fire somewhere; he would look in the local evening paper later to see.

  He paused at the intersection of two roads, suddenly unsure where he was going, then remembered that of course he was going out to Canning Town, to get to Cerise before Colm killed her. No, that was in Colm’s time – Cerise had been dead for a hundred years and nothing Benedict could do would help her—

  The clock chimed again – two single chimes – and with the sound the compulsion returned. He had an hour to get to Canning Town. Could he do it? Surely he could. Here was the Tube entrance.

  In the tube he still felt odd – not weak exactly, but not entirely in control of his mind. Was it Colm again, pulling him even deeper into that long-ago world? He had no awareness of Colm’s presence, but it was vital to remember he was in his own century and Colm and Declan had lived a hundred years ago.

  At Oxford Street, where he got off to switch to an eastbound train, there seemed to be some kind of disruption. All the other passengers had alighted and seemed to be heading, very purposefully, for a different station. Benedict hesitated, then followed them, because usually if there was a diversion on the Underground, somebody always did know or had heard an announcement that the rest had not picked up. There was a long brick-lined tunnel, at the end of which echoing steps led down to a grim vaulted station smelling of something that Benedict, reaching back into childhood memories, identified after a few moments as soot. I’m going back, he thought. I’m going back into my own childhood. Or am I going even further back . . . ? He had no idea if this prospect terrified him or excited him, but when a train rattled into the station he got in without hesitation, and sat in a corner, turning up his coat collar against the cold. This had to be the maddest journey in the history of the world, but he could not get rid of the compulsion that he could somehow get to Cerise before Colm did – that he could somehow prevent Colm killing again. That was the maddest thing of all, of course; you could not unmake history. He studied the other passengers covertly. They all looked fairly ordinary, but the lighting was dim and most of them were so muffled up against the cold they could have been from any era. The few females in the carriage wore hats, but even this was not remarkable these days; girls wore all kinds of trendy pull-on hats in winter.

  As the train jolted along, Benedict leaned over to wipe moisture from the window with his scarf, trying to read the names of the stations, but unable to see anything other than brick tunnels with the occasional thread of light from above. The dreamlike quality of the journey intensified, and this time it began to feel like one of those horror films where the newly dead were transported to some kind of judgement place. But this was so ridiculous a concept he refused to give it any credence. Would this slow train never reach its destination?

  It was just after half past two when it pulled into the station. Was this Canning Town? Yes, there was a sign on one of the walls. Benedict had been expecting a large station – he thought it was an interchange with National Rail and also the Docklands Light Railway. But it looked as if London Underground really were diverting passengers and as if they had opened up one of the oldest underground stations they had. There was an old-fashioned booking hall, and grimy brickwork, interspersed with elaborate iron scrolls. I believe I really have gone back, thought Benedict, looking about him. No, that’s absurd. It’s this wretched condition – the alter ego taking over. I’ll just take a look round, then I’ll go home. He dared not think he might not be able to get home.

  Outside the station he again had the feeling that everything was displaced. He also had the odd impression that the sky was lower than it should be. Or was it simply that it was a dark afternoon and the thick mist was still everywhere?

  It
was then that he saw something that seemed to split his head in two all over again. The streets were crowded, but ahead of him was a man wearing a long dark overcoat, like an old army greatcoat. The deep collar was turned up to hide his face almost completely, but when he half turned his head Benedict saw him in profile. Colm, he thought. It really is him. And he’s got her with him – Cerise.

  He thrust his way through the people to get nearer. He was positive it was Colm, and that it was Cerise with him, although she was not quite as Benedict had imagined: she was more slightly built and he had not thought her hair was that colour. Colm was not exactly carrying her, but he had one arm round her and she was leaning against him. Anger rose in Benedict at the disinterest of the crowds. Couldn’t anyone see she was being forced to go with him?

  As he crossed the road and went after the two figures, a church clock somewhere close by chimed the quarter hour.

  Fifteen minutes to three. And at one o’clock Cerise had said she would give Colm a couple of hours to respond.

  Michael had not been able to get rid of the memory of Benedict Doyle saying Nell should not go to Holly Lodge.

  Because we both know who’s inside that house, he had said in the voice that was so eerily not his own.

  Michael refused to believe that something malevolent was inside Holly Lodge, waiting to pounce on Nell. This was part of Benedict’s multiple personality thing; it was not real. But the chess set was real, said his mind. Fergal McMahon seems to have been real, as well. And Nicholas Sheehan was real too; he was ordained in 1874, and the event was recorded.

  It was midday and Michael’s tutorials were over for the day. He had intended to spend the afternoon preparing some notes for his second years, focusing on the Victorians’ slightly contradictory custom of summarily dismissing servants who transgressed the mores of the day – usually by getting pregnant – but then helping organizations dedicated to what they termed fallen women. He wanted the students to find examples of this ambiguous attitude in the literature of the period; there were plenty of examples for them to home in on.