by Sarah Rayne
The trouble was that Benedict’s story kept intruding. Michael found himself remembering Eithne, the serving girl at Kilderry Castle, who had got pregnant out of wedlock. That was that rogue Fintan Reilly, thought Michael, smiling. But at least the Wicked Earl of Kilderry had not turned Eithne out into the snow. Oh, blast those people from Benedict’s story, why can’t I forget them! And why can’t I forget what Benedict said?
It would not hurt to phone Nell. A friendly, ordinary call, to ask how she was getting on. Before he could think too much about it, Michael reached for the phone and dialled her mobile.
It went straight to voicemail, but if she was wandering around various rooms, looking into cupboards and even cellars, she would probably have switched the phone off. He left a casual, cheerful, message, saying he hoped she was uncovering some good finds, and he would see her later. After this he returned to work, trying to ignore the nagging unease.
I don’t think Nell should go to Holly Lodge . . . We both know who’s inside that house . . .
‘Oh hell,’ said Michael aloud, and reached for the phone again to check the times of London trains. There was one at one thirty which got in to Paddington shortly before two thirty.
On the train, he felt better. Nell would be fine and he might help her with some of the inventorying, and they would come back together and then enjoy their evening.
The taxi dropped him outside Holly Lodge. It was pretty much as Michael had visualized it: a bit gloomy, a bit neglected, with the air of having known better days. There was a light showing in one of the downstairs rooms. Michael went along the gravel drive and plied the door knocker. It echoed inside the house, but there was no sound of any movement. He tried again. Still nothing. Perhaps Nell was upstairs, or at the back of the house. She had said something about French windows, so he made his way round the side of the house. Yes, there were the French windows. Michael peered through them. There was no sign of Nell – or wait, wasn’t that her jacket thrown over a chair? He knocked on the window and called out, but the house remained silent and still. Perhaps she had gone out to get some lunch. Without her jacket, though, on a bitter January day? He found his phone and tried her number, but again it went to voicemail. Then he tried the French windows, but they were locked.
He was not exactly worried, but he was a bit uneasy. He went back to the front of the house. The front door would be locked as well, but he would try it anyway. But it was not locked. The old-fashioned brass handle turned easily and smoothly.
The minute he stepped into the hall, the unease deepened. He reminded himself he did not believe in ghosts, not even after that very strange business in Shropshire when he had met Nell. But he did believe that houses could retain atmospheres – that you could sometimes sense if their inhabitants had been happy or sad or lonely. Holly Lodge held none of those emotions; what it did hold was fear, stark and unmistakable. The feeling was so strong that if it had not been for wanting to find Nell, Michael would have left as fast as possible.
There was a small table lamp glowing in the hall, and it looked as if there was another in one of the rooms leading off it. Michael called out, hoping Nell would come out of one of the rooms, or down the stairs, laughing and saying he had given her a scare. But she did not.
He looked into the rooms at the house’s front, then went through to the one with French windows. Rather guiltily, he felt in the pockets of Nell’s jacket. Tube ticket, a tissue, an odd peppermint. And her phone. Michael frowned, then went into the other rooms, his footsteps echoing eerily. Everything was ordinary and unthreatening.
The kitchen was a large, reasonably modern room. A chair had been drawn up to an oak table, and there was a plate with a few crumbs on it, and an apple core. A sheet of notes in Nell’s writing lay at the side, with her Filofax next to it. Michael had a mental picture of Nell eating a picnic lunch, reading her notes as she did so, perhaps checking for an address or phone number to call a colleague because she had found something outside her own province. The Filofax was open at the calendar section, and today’s date was circled rather elaborately in red. In the evening section, she had written, in ordinary blue ink, ‘Michael – supper’. This did not tell him anything he did not already know, and he looked round the kitchen for further ideas. Without thinking much about it, he touched the electric kettle. It was hot – in fact it was so hot it could not be long since it had boiled. Michael stared at it. This was starting to be the classic dark fairy-story scenario: the apparently empty house with sinister signs of occupancy. A door left open so the unwary traveller could lift the latch and step inside . . . And, once inside, there were lamps burning, a kettle singing on the hob . . . Michael wondered whether, if he went into the bedrooms, he would find any of the beds occupied. With the corpse-bride out of Robert Browning’s poem, said his mind cynically? Or were you thinking of Goldilocks in the Three Bears’ cottage? Even so, as he went up the stairs, he was remembering the eighteenth-century sonnet with the old bed that thrilled the gloom with the tales of human sorrows and delights it had witnessed over the centuries.
Thrilled gloom or not, he would check the bedrooms in case Nell had fallen and knocked herself out. Michael called out again, willing her to answer, but Holly Lodge remained silent.
Most of the rooms had nothing but discarded or dust-sheeted furniture in them, so he went up to the attic floor. The rooms here looked smaller, and the passageway linking them was narrower, but again there were only odd pieces of furniture and boxes of old curtains.
When he entered the room at the far end, he had an impression of extreme fear, and so strong was it, he almost went straight out again. There were several large packing cases, and an old-fashioned dressing table with a swing mirror stood against the wall. Was that where Benedict had glimpsed that sinister reflection that had lodged in his mind? It would not be difficult to believe a figure stood in the smoky depths, watching you.
But the room looked perfectly normal, even though the fear hung in the air like clotted strings. Pushed against one wall was a small bureau with a drop-front flap and a chair pulled up to it, and Michael sat down and tried to decide what to do. Would Benedict or Nina know where Nell was? He did not have their phone numbers, but they were probably on Nell’s phone or written in the Filofax. Michael was not sure if this was a situation where he could intrude on her privacy to that extent. Was there anywhere else she might be? Had she found something in the house that had sent her hotfoot out of the house? Where, though? And would she leave the house unlocked and her jacket and phone and Filofax behind?
How about the chess set? If Benedict’s story could be believed, the rest of the figures had perished in the watchtower fire that had killed Sheehan, so Nell could not have found the rest of the set. But might she have found out something about its origins? Paperwork? A letter? On this thought, Michael began to sort through the desk, tipping out the contents of the envelopes. But they seemed to contain only old household accounts, yellowing notepaper with Holly Lodge’s address, and bills from local merchants. No, wait, there were a couple of old photographs. He seized on them. One was a group shot, the grainy, sepia tones of the nineteenth century, the faces of the people indistinct and the background blurred. On the back, in faded, slightly childish-looking writing, were the words ‘My friends in Kilglenn.’
Kilglenn. That edge-of-Ireland place near the stormy Cliffs of Moher, with an old watchtower where Nicholas Sheehan and Colm Rourke had played chess . . .
The other photo was clearer and looked as if it had been taken by a professional photographer. It was a posed shot of two people, head and shoulders, both very young, barely out of their teens. The man was dark-haired, and he wore the faintly embarrassed amusement of any Victorian gentleman faced with a camera. The girl came up to his shoulder. She was even younger and she had an air of fragility and innocence, but there was something in the slant of her eyes and the curve of her lips that suggested she might be capable of being very far from innocent. Her hair fell to her shoulder
s.
The edges of the photograph were indented with parallel lines, as if it had been in a frame for many years and the frame or the glass had cut into the paper. Michael turned it over. On the back, in a different hand to the one on the group picture, it said, ‘Colm and Romilly, taken at his eighteenth birthday.’
Colm, thought Michael. Colm Rourke, Declan’s closest friend, the boy who played that fatal game of chess with Nicholas Sheehan. And Romilly, the copper-haired waif, who sobbed out a tale of seduction or rape, but looked out of the corners of her eyes as she did so, to see what effect her story was having.
Benedict was not suffering from multiple personality disorder at all. Those people he had talked about so vividly had existed – which implied the events he had described had happened. Two Irish boys had come to London, to find Colm’s cousin and seek their fortunes. They must have seen it as a fairy story – a romantic adventure. Two heroes travelling to the city whose streets were paved with gold, going to the aid of the beautiful Romilly.
And which version of Romilly’s story was true? Had the enigmatic Nicholas Sheehan, being lonely – even perhaps influenced by the chessmen’s malevolence – really seduced her that day? Or was Sheehan’s own story the truth: that Romilly had demanded money to prevent her spreading a rape story? Had she been so desperate to leave Kilglenn she had done that? And had Sheehan, desperate to preserve the chessmen’s solitude, yielded to her blackmail? Michael supposed he would never know the truth, but remembering portions of Benedict’s story, thought he would not put blackmail past Romilly.
He tidied the photos back into their envelope. The fact that these people had existed was something good to tell Benedict – unless, of course, he had seen these photos for himself and folded them into his fantasies. But none of it got Michael any nearer to finding Nell.
He checked the desk again. Had he looked in all the pigeonholes and envelopes? No, there was one with yellowing newspaper cuttings. They were not likely to be relevant, but Michael was not ignoring anything.
The cuttings dated from the late 1890s, and described a series of murders committed in Canning Town by a killer the press of the day had dubbed the Mesmer Murderer. Benedict had not mentioned a murderer as being part of Declan’s story, but this had been Declan’s house and someone living here had wanted to preserve these articles. Michael began to read the top article. It described how the murderer had been caught, but how, on his way to face justice, had escaped. The hue and cry had been raised, and the hunt was still on. A photograph, apparently taken by an enterprising reporter with an early camera, was reproduced.
Michael unfolded the rest of the cutting and stared down at the photograph. It was smudgy but it was recognizable. Allowing for the few years’ difference, the face of the Mesmer Murderer was the one in the photograph he had found earlier in this desk. Colm Rourke.
So the shining fairy-tale adventure of those two boys had turned to the poisoned fruit of so many fairy stories. The golden pavements had been dirty and unfriendly; the heroine had sold her purity for a mess of pottage and had died a sad squalid death in a slum. And one of the heroes had been branded as a multiple murderer.
There were a couple of earlier articles, which gave more details about the victims. Michael read them carefully. Four out of the five victims seemed to have had an appointment with the killer – an appointment they had written in their diaries, circling the dates elaborately in red. And the markings in each case resembled the outline of a chess piece.
A chess piece. Lights were exploding in Michael’s mind and he dropped the article and half fell down the stairs, snatching up the Filofax from the kitchen table. Yes, it was a chess piece Nell had drawn on today’s page, all right. But she had said she might get the single figure valued today if she had time, so probably the little silhouette was a kind of aide memoire. And the Mesmer Murders had been over a hundred years ago.
But there are times when logic flees, and something else drives the mind and dictates the actions. For Michael this was one of those times. He did not try to reason that those long-ago people and long-dead tragedies could not affect the present. He only knew that Nell was missing, that she had marked her diary in exactly the same way as those other murdered people, and that he had to find her as fast as possible.
The only clue he had was Canning Town, where four of the five victims had been found, near an old sewer outlet by the docks. Canning Town was where Romilly Rourke had had a room – Benedict had described how Declan and Colm had gone there to find her, but they had been too late because she had been dying from a botched abortion.
Michael went down the stairs at top speed, and out into the street to flag down a taxi.
TWENTY-FOUR
The afternoon was darkening when Michael reached Canning Town.
‘Bit off my regular beat,’ said the taxi driver when Michael asked for Bidder Lane or Clock Street. ‘We can ask when we get there, though.’
But there was no Bidder Lane to be found, at least not in this part of London, and no Clock Street.
‘You sure you got the address right?’ said the taxi driver.
‘No, I’m not,’ said Michael. ‘And I’ve never been to this part of London, either. They’re just two places I’ve been told about. Thanks for trying, though. I think I’ll be better on foot from here. I can ask local people if they know those streets, or go into a shop or a pub.’
The area, generally, was a piecemeal industrial estate, with pubs at intervals and scatterings of shops. There were gasworks and gasometers as well, and modern tower blocks jutting up into the skyline. And yet, here and there were glimpses of that older London – the London that Declan and Colm must have known. Michael could not see the river, but a dank wet smell hung everywhere, and he could hear the muffled hoots of barges. Surely Nell was not out here. But this was where that long-ago murderer had killed his victims, and Nell’s diary had been marked with the same curious symbol as those victims.
I’ve got to find her, thought Michael, still in the grip of the inexplicable compulsion.
Grey mist clung to the buildings, turning them into ghost outlines. Mist of any kind played tricks with your eyes, so that you began to imagine silent figures watching you from its depths. It played tricks with your hearing as well, creating curious resonances. Several times Michael thought he heard the clatter of wheels as if someone was pushing a barrow or a large cart along, and when he paused at the intersection of two streets music reached him – jangling piano music that seemed to have no relation to today’s thudding car stereos.
He had lost all sense of direction, but this appeared to be one of the older – and certainly poorer – parts of the area. There were no longer any industrial units or steel-fronted shops; instead was a street of small terraced houses with grimy facades. There was no traffic, but a few people were around, although when Michael tried to approach a woman to ask for directions she ducked her head away and scurried away from him. Two men, shabbily dressed and smelling of alcohol, came down the street, but they were walking so erratically and laughing so raucously that Michael gave them a wide berth.
A church clock, somewhere on his left, chimed three o’clock, although the mist was so thick it felt more like the middle of the night. There was a pub on the corner though, and light streamed from the windows. Probably it had been where the music had come from. He would go in and ask for directions to Bidder Lane.
As he neared the pub he saw a gap between the houses – a kind of natural alley that looked as if it led down to the quay. Michael hesitated, wondering whether to investigate and, as he did so, he saw darkly silhouetted against the river fog the shape of a man half carrying what looked like a female figure.
For the second time that day he did not stop to reason. He went after the figures at once. The man was too far away for him to see any details, except that he was wearing a long dark coat, but there was something familiar about the way the woman’s hair fell to one side. Was it Nell? Michael followed, trying to decid
e what to do, chary of putting Nell (if it was she) into danger. Ought he to call the police? But what if it was not Nell, and there was some perfectly innocent explanation?
Ahead was a flight of stone steps; in this light they looked slimy and coils of rope and scatterings of debris lay on them. The man went down these steps and Michael, following at a cautious distance, saw they led down to the quay.
The mist was thicker here, so much so that this was almost turning into the classic walk through fog, beloved of film makers and writers of horror. He and Nell would laugh about it later; they would conjure up old black and white films and gothic novels: Fu Manchu spreading his sinister spider webs through Limehouse; Dr Jekyll metamorphosing into Mr Hyde . . . Assorted murderers stalking the shadows . . . Assorted murderers. Including a real one who had mesmerized his victims into meeting him out here?
Someone had recently sprinkled what looked like sand on the steps – perhaps to make the descent less treacherous. When Michael reached the bottom there was no sign of his quarry, and he paused, looking round. The river was still some way below him but he could make out the shapes of barges, and see lights from the bridges. He was standing on a walkway with an iron railing, and further along the walkway was an opening cut into the wall. ‘The bodies were found near the old Bidder Lane sewer,’ the newspaper had said. Could that be the sewer? He looked around for the figure he had followed, and it was then that he saw the walkway bore sandy footprints, leading towards the outlet.
Michael began to walk stealthily towards the tunnel, thinking he would try to see inside, and if there was anything in the least suspicious he would call the police at once. He was within about ten feet of it when he realized that there were other footsteps walking down this fog-shrouded path.