by Sarah Rayne
‘You hid there,’ said Patrick. ‘In the bone-pit.’ His voice was devoid of all expression, but Emily heard one of the attendants smother a gasp of horror.
‘I had to tread on heads and bits of jaws and things. They crunched under my feet. But I went to the very centre of the bone-pit, and I pulled all the bones over my head so that the bad men wouldn’t see me. Some of the bones had bits of skin still on them, like bits of leather.’
Emily could not have taken her eyes from Christabel if her life had depended on it. She thought: that all happened to her when she was a little girl. Seven or eight.
Christy said, ‘We knew a lot of things about those birds. Things that grown-ups didn’t know. Selina called them ogre-birds. She said they were like the ogres in the fairy stories. Ogres eat children, did you know that? They shout, Fee-fi-fo-fum, those ogres, and they run across the countryside and they can run faster than anyone because they have special boots. And they like to make bread from human bones, and they like to have their dinner from human children.’
‘Only in stories,’ said Patrick. ‘Not in real life.’
‘You don’t know that. You have to be careful,’ said Christabel, and again the flicker of something that was neither childlike nor scared showed in her face. ‘There’re ogres in the real world–lots of them. Only you can’t tell who they are because they wear human disguises, and they’re very, very good disguises. But I know about the disguises,’ she said, and, bizarrely, the child’s voice came through again. ‘I know because I’m clever as clever, my daddy always said I was clever as clever, like in the poem. “Now that I’m six, I’m clever as clever, and I think I’ll stay six for ever and ever.” My daddy used to say that to me. But he didn’t know about the ogre-birds who pretend to be people. Selina didn’t know either, although she knew a lot of things.’ She looked at Emily suddenly. ‘You know about them, don’t you? About the ogres who pretend to be people.’
‘Yes,’ said Emily, who had absolutely no idea if this was the right thing to say. A distant memory from her own childhood stirred for a moment, and a half-forgotten childish belief came back to her. She said, ‘They hide inside nightmares sometimes.’
‘Yes. Yes. How clever of you, Emily. Your name is Emily, isn’t it?’
‘Um, yes.’
‘They hide, those old ogres,’ said Christy, and again it was the child speaking: the long-ago child who had possessed the gift of most children for accepting the bizarre or the macabre and the fantastical without question.
Patrick said cautiously, ‘In houses?’
‘In people. It’s quite hard to know who they are sometimes; you have to look extra hard. They pretend to be your friend, and they say, Oh, what a pretty little girl. Come into my house and have tea, little girl. But after a bit, you can see what they really are. You can see the claws and the beaks, and when you see those,’ she said, ‘that’s when you know. That’s when you have to kill them.’
This time the silence went on for much longer. Then Patrick said, very gently, ‘As you did, Christabel.’
There was a long silence, and then the struggling-to-be-born voice said, with terrible obedience, ‘Yes. As I did.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
If they had been characters in a film, the scene in the day-room would have ended with Patrick clutching Emily to him, and saying something like, ‘Oh God, I thought she was going to kill you, and then I’d have lost you,’ and Emily sobbing into his shoulder like the worst kind of wimpish Victorian heroine, until the violins swept in and there was a soft-focus fade-out.
What actually happened was that Christabel simply stopped speaking, not abruptly, but in diminishing trickles like a tap being gradually turned off, and sagged back in the chair, and then somebody handed Patrick a hypodermic, and Patrick said, ‘Chlorpromazine? Good,’ and bent over Christy.
Emily was left to untangle herself from the chair into which she had tumbled, and somebody brought her a cup of tea, strongly sweetened, and one of the attendants said she would drive her back to the cottage. There was some talk of how Emily had got to Moy earlier on, and Emily tried to remember if she had come on her motorbike or if she had walked, and could not, which made her feel like a stooge all over again. The attendant said it did not matter how she had got here anyway; she could not possibly be left to get home under her own steam after such an upsetting experience, and it seemed to be decided that Emily would be driven home in the attendant’s car.
Once home, Emily went round the cottage switching on every electric heater and radiator, and building up the coal fire in the hearth. After this she dragged the ancient afghan rug that had been her mother’s from the depths of dad’s wardrobe and wrapped it round herself, subsiding into a chair by the sitting-room fire, her hands curled around another mug of scaldingly hot tea. Despite all of this she was still shivering with cold.
The rug reminded her of her mother. In the months after she died Emily had not been able to bear opening her mother’s cupboards or the drawers where her clothes were, but it was suddenly nice to be wrapped in the afghan; it felt as if mum was not so far away after all, or as if she might be reminding Emily that she was still looking out for her. Whether you believed in that stuff about an afterlife or not it felt comforting.
The knock at the door made her jump, even though she had been listening for it, and a bit of the frozen chill melted.
Emily unwrapped herself from the afghan and went to the door to let Patrick in.
He sat in the slightly battered chair on the other side of the little hearth, and drank the tea that Emily made for him, although he looked as if a large whisky would have done him more good.
In case he did not want to talk about Pippa–Christabel–or in case to do so might be breaching medical confidentiality, she said, ‘What was the alarm bell for? The one that rang just after I got there? I never found out. Was there a riot after all?’
‘Oh, that.’ He finished the tea and set the cup down. ‘It was that disgusting little ruffian Logan.’
‘Flashing again, was he?’ said Emily who knew the stories about Logan, and Patrick grinned and for a moment looked about ten years younger.
‘Floorshow for the benefit of a DrugWatch group who were being given the guided tour,’ he said. ‘Most of them took it in their stride, but unfortunately they had their new patroness with them–some stupid society female whose name looks good on the letterhead, but who has absolutely no idea—She screamed, which was the worst possible thing she could have done, the silly bitch,’ said Patrick. ‘And so Logan immediately went into the full cabaret act–I don’t expect you need the details, do you?–and most of D wing started banging the tables and egging him on. At times like that the place turns into a powder keg and it wouldn’t take much to start a real riot, so we have to use emergency procedures.’
He leaned his head back and stared into the fire. ‘Emily, you were very good with her–with Pippa. I mean Christabel. I wanted to thank you and explain about that, if you’d like to hear.’ He leaned his head back and stared into the fire. The flames painted red lights into his hair and deepened the shadows around his eyes.
Emily said, ‘Of course I’d like to hear. It’s a weird coincidence, isn’t it? Both of them ending up at Moy.’
‘Only on the face of it. Moy’s a specialist place; it’s meant for cases exactly like Mary and Christabel. Disturbed people with personality disorders and a history of violence. So looked at from that aspect, it’s not so remarkable that they’re both there. But we had no idea that there was any connection between them,’ said Patrick. ‘Pippa came to Moy years ago–long before my time. There’s a note on her file that she was placed in a juvenile institution when she was ten, and we do know she was moved several times. But her parents must have used a false name at the start—’
‘Philippa,’ said Emily. ‘It’s her middle name–she said so.’
‘She did, didn’t she? And there’s some very ordinary surname–I forget it now, but it’s somet
hing like Jones or Edwards. Totally unremarkable. I should think it was probably her mother’s maiden name, or her grandmother’s.’
‘And so her real identity was lost.’
‘Yes. We’ll have to set up an inquiry about that,’ said Patrick. ‘It’ll be a long way back, but it’ll have to be done.’ He suddenly looked impossibly tired again.
‘You know Mary’s history, though? You knew there’d been an older sister?’
‘Oh yes. That was part of what drove Mary to kill her parents. The story was that Christabel died in India, and that Mary’s parents never got over it. They canonised her memory–enshrined it–to such a degree that Mary felt excluded.’
Enshrined…Emily had a sudden vivid memory of the odd sad little collection of childhood objects in Selina March’s bedroom. She frowned and said, ‘Was Mary really neglected or excluded? Or did she just think it?’
‘I’m not sure we know. It’s not always easy to separate the truth from Mary’s delusions. She wasn’t neglected in the physical sense. And the case notes say her parents displayed no more than the normal degree of grief at the loss of a child and that Mary had a perfectly normal, perfectly stable and loving childhood.’
‘But–would anyone have known that for sure?’ Emily was finding this so interesting she was forgetting about feeling cold, and she was nearly forgetting about this being the godlike Dr Irvine, who had better be treated with respect on account of being dad’s immediate boss, never mind how she might feel about him in private. ‘The doctors and social workers and what not couldn’t have known so very much about Mary’s childhood,’ she said. ‘They certainly couldn’t know how anyone behaved because they didn’t come on the scene until after Mary’s parents were dead. After she killed them. So their opinions would be based on what Mary told them, wouldn’t they? Or maybe on what her teachers said, or what friends or family said–uh, was there any family?’
‘No. They seem to have drawn a line under their old life after they got back from India. They bought a house in a part of England where they didn’t know anyone.’
‘Then a lot of that stuff about whether Mary was neglected or excluded is–what’s that word they use in court?’
‘Hearsay,’ said Patrick. He was smiling at her with indulgent affection. As if a child had said something clever. Damn and blast.
‘Hearsay isn’t reliable evidence, is it? It isn’t admissible in court.’
‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘But the thing is that Mary herself believed she was excluded. She believed that Christabel took up most of her parents’ affection and energy. She considered she was neglected and as a result she hated her mother and father and she decided they had to be punished. It’s pretty much a classic behavioural pattern, although it’s an extreme case.’
‘Did Mary hate Christabel as well? Because that’d surely have been normal? I don’t know about you,’ said Emily, ‘but I think I might get a bit irritated if my parents had kept shoving a kind of Saint Christabel in my face every day. Anyone might go a bit peculiar after years of that. I don’t mean you’d go on the rampage with the breadknife.’
‘Yes, I’ll give you the Saint Christabel touch,’ said Patrick. ‘I think that was probably what did happen.’ He seemed to have forgotten that he was only talking to Don Frost’s daughter, and he seemed to have forgotten about being tired, as well. He was leaning forward in the chair, his eyes brilliant, his face alight with energy and enthusiasm. He loves her, thought Emily. He loves all his poor mad murderers and rapists. He’s passionate about them all. I don’t suppose he has much passion left over for anything else.
He said, ‘But the really odd thing is that each time Mary killed–and she killed at least twice more after her parents–she apparently said that Christabel was with her when she did it–that Christabel was urging her on and giving her strength–empowering her, that’s the word I want. She thought Christabel was dead, of course, and in a bizarre way she thought her dead sister’s spirit was speaking to her.’
‘But Christabel wasn’t dead at all,’ said Emily thoughtfully. ‘And when Mary came to Moy, Christabel was a whole lot nearer than anyone imagined.’
‘Yes.’ He considered for a moment, and then said, ‘Christabel’s case-notes are very scrappy indeed, but I’ve tried to piece things together. Knowing who she is–knowing her real name–helps immensely. I can fill in some of the details from what I know about Mary, and I’ll be able to check back in the records. And I think there’s probably a gap: a period–say a year or so–after the family came back to England with Christabel, when they lived in a different part of the country. Christabel would have been severely traumatised from what had happened in India and they probably tried to get help for her, although it was still only the late 1940s and the facilities wouldn’t have been very good. But by the time she was ten, she had been placed in a juvenile asylum.’
‘And that’s when her parents moved away. Leaving her behind. I’ll bet they pretended they were only just back from India,’ said Emily. ‘And they told people that Christy had died out there.’
‘Yes. And you know, Emily, on the face of it, it was an entirely understandable way to behave. A fresh start. No painful associations. Mary was born round about then, and afterwards they built up their fantasy about the perfect child who had been taken from them. It might have been the only way they could deal with what had happened.’
‘More likely they were ashamed of Christabel,’ said Emily tartly.
‘What a cynic you are.’ Patrick’s tone was indulgent and Emily scowled.
‘It’s very sad though, isn’t it? Christy’s story, I mean.’
‘All their stories are sad if you look at them from one angle, Emily. But if I’d known the truth about Christabel I could probably have done more to help her.’ A spark of anger showed briefly.
‘Patrick—’ The name came out before she realised it, but he did not seem to notice. ‘You said they put Christy in a juvenile asylum. Why?’
‘Because she was a child-murderess,’ said Patrick. ‘Like her sister. But where Mary only killed four or five times, Christabel killed seven people.’
‘Oh God,’ said Emily, staring at him. ‘Seven.’
‘Seven that we know of. Two were teachers at her school–the notes aren’t very clear, and the place has long since closed down. But I think it was what we’d call now a school for children with special needs.’
‘Because she had stopped speaking?’
‘Yes. While she was there she killed two of the teachers, and one of the older pupils as well. There was some story about a music teacher trying to befriend her; she was being given piano lessons, and the music teacher became fond of her. She used to invite Christy to her house.’
Emily said, ‘“Come into my house and have tea, little girl.’”
‘It sounds as if that’s how she saw it. I don’t recall the precise details of the other killings, but they were the same kind of thing. The juvenile asylum was probably seen as only a temporary measure.’
‘But it wasn’t temporary,’ said Emily thoughtfully. ‘They came to realise that it wasn’t temporary at all. She couldn’t be let out into the world. D’you think that was when her parents made the decision to pretend she was dead?’
‘Yes, I do. It would have been reasonably easy for them, as well; it was only about 1949 or 1950, remember: there wouldn’t have been the media coverage there is today, so the murders wouldn’t have been very widely known.’ He frowned, and said, ‘I’m still trying to match Christabel up with what I know of Mary’s background. I think the father worked for the British government in India, and I think they were modestly affluent. Mary was born when he was about forty-one or two.’
Emily was not much liking the sound of those two people who had consigned poor, flawed Christabel to an asylum and then announced her death. She said, ‘And when Mary was born, they told her that she had had an older sister who was dead.’
‘They did. They talked and acted as if Christ
abel was dead, and I don’t think they ever diverged from that. Mary’s referred to memorial services on the anniversary of Christabel’s death each year, and to photographs in silver frames and a vase of flowers on her birthday.’
Emily found this slightly macabre but it was what people did. Like dad keeping that photo of mum by his bedside, and sometimes playing records they had listened to before they were married. Late Sixties and Seventies stuff, mostly. It was pretty naff music, but it was what mum and dad had shared and if it made mum live again, good for dad. And earlier on, Emily herself had dug out mum’s afghan, as much for comfort as for warmth. You clung to memories because they were a link back to the person you had loved.
She said, ‘But wouldn’t it all have been dragged out at Mary’s trial? If she killed her parents because she was jealous of her dead sister, wouldn’t it have come out that the sister wasn’t dead at all?’
‘It didn’t come out. And again it was pre-paparazzi, Emily. The mid Sixties. Christabel had been shut away from the world for fourteen years, and her parents had probably destroyed everything that might have given a clue to the truth. Even to giving her a different name.’
‘If her father worked for the government he might have pulled a few strings over that,’ said Emily.
‘Yes, that’s possible. Whatever he did, the truth died with him.’
‘Until I let Christabel see a picture of a golden eagle on a lunch-box, and an attendant blurted out the name “Maskelyne” by chance,’ said Emily. ‘Oh, Patrick, I’m so sorry I did that. You said don’t talk about animals, but I never thought that a photograph of a bird—’
‘None of it was your fault,’ he said at once. ‘It’s the law of something-or-other–something metaphysical. Cause and effect. A butterfly beats its wings in Japan, and because of it an earthquake occurs on the west coast of America.’