Death Notes (A Phineas Fox Mystery)

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘But Donal’s not here for long, and he always looks forward to being with you.’

  ‘And he’s family,’ put in Aunt Nuala. ‘His mother was our cousin, and you’re like a younger sister to him.’

  ‘I’ll only be out for an hour or so,’ said Jessica. ‘I want to sketch the trees near the beck. I’m going to paint a proper picture at the weekend. But I could go to Galway tomorrow with Donal.’

  ‘We’ll do that,’ said Donal, and the aunts looked pleased.

  After lunch Jess scooted up to her room to put a few of her sketches in an envelope, because Mrs Drury had particularly said she would like to see them. By the time she got out of the house, a pulse of half-fear, half-excitement was beating in her head. Was she really going to go inside Tromloy? Would she see that room with the fire screen, and the window-seat, and the photo of the man on the old stage? But did any of those things exist? Perhaps she really was going mad. With the thought, the words of the soft voice scratched against her mind … ‘People might say you were mad, Jessica … They might even shut you away …’

  The nervousness increased as she walked up the rutted track. Jessica realized she was clenching and unclenching her hands, so she dug them in her pockets to stop. She hated her hands. The aunts had bought her several pairs of thin cotton gloves that she could wear all the time, but she hated wearing the gloves even more than she hated her hands.

  Tromloy was much nicer than it had looked from the path below. Or was it? Was there something there, waiting …? Something that was saying, Come inside, Jessica, because that’s when the nightmare will start … Because this is Tromlui, Jess, the nightmare house …

  Jess hesitated, but then the door was being opened and Bea Drury was there, smiling and holding out her hand.

  ‘I’m so pleased you’ve come, Jessica. I’ve been looking out for you.’

  The sitting room was almost exactly as Jessica expected. The low ceiling, the bookshelves on each side of the hearth … Were the rocking chair and the fire screen somewhere in the house, too?

  Beatrice Drury had baked the most delicious chocolate cake – ‘It was my daughter’s favourite cake,’ she said. There was tea or Coke or fruit juice, and while they ate and drank, Bea – it was becoming easy to think of her as Bea by now – asked to see Jess’s sketches. She studied them all carefully, making comments about each one, then she said Jessica was very gifted.

  ‘Have you ever thought of studying art at university? Or at one of the art colleges? I think the Galway-Mayo Institute has a terrific art and design section.’

  Jessica would like nothing more in the world than to be somewhere where you drew and painted all the time, and where people taught you how to do it properly. Uncle Tormod probably would not mind or even care very much if she were to do that – Jess sometimes thought he did not really want her in the house at all – but the aunts would find all kinds of reasons against it. How would she manage in a strange place on her own, they would ask. She was always so nervous with new places and strange people, and she had had so much time off school. They might even tell her that her hands would mean she would not be accepted at an art college anyway.

  So Jess said, carefully, that she was not sure if her aunts and her uncle would allow her to go away to study art, and before Bea could say anything else, she asked if she could see some of Bea’s own work.

  ‘Of course, if you’d like to.’

  Jess wanted to look at Bea Drury’s work for ever. She almost forgot her fear that the bad images were crouching in the shadows and that they might suddenly claw their way into her mind. These pictures drew you into marvellous magical worlds – the worlds that existed inside poetry and songs and books. If you saw any of them on a book cover you would want to buy the book at once. One picture was the hazelnut chariot of Mab made by the joiner squirrel, and the wild journeys it had made through people’s dreams. It was so beautifully drawn, Jessica wanted to lift it off the page and make it come alive.

  ‘I drew that for my daughter,’ said Bea, and she put out a hand to touch the page as if, Jessica thought, it might bring her daughter back for a moment.

  She said, carefully, that she knew some of the words about Mab – and about the joiner squirrel who had been the fairies’ coach-maker.

  ‘I know you do. You were reciting it to yourself when we met on the hillside,’ said Bea, her eyes still on the picture. But she was smiling. ‘Abigail loved the speech, although I’m not sure if she entirely understood it,’ she said. ‘“… she gallops night by night/Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love”.’ She frowned, and looked startled, as if the words had come from someone else, or as if she had forgotten for a moment where she was.

  ‘I’m sorry if I upset you by saying the speech the other afternoon,’ said Jessica, hesitantly. ‘Because of – um – because of your daughter, I mean.’

  ‘It isn’t as upsetting as it used to be. And it’s nice to remember things Abigail liked.’ A pause, then she said, ‘Would you like to see her room? She would have been almost exactly the age you are now, I think. It’s not a shrine or anything morbid like that, but some of her things are still there.’

  It was impossible to refuse and, in any case, Jess was interested in the girl who had died and about whom Beatrice spoke with such love and sadness. What kind of daughter would someone like Mrs Drury have had? It must have been marvellous for Abigail Drury to have a mother like this, a mother who understood how important painting and drawing were.

  But the fear was churning up more strongly. Would Abigail’s bedroom be the room with the fireplace? Jess said she would like to see the room, but as she followed Bea out of the sitting room her heart was thudding violently. She had walked up these stairs before. Here was the creaking board that made a sound like gunshot if you trod on it late at night when the house was quiet. And now came the turn of the stairs to the right, with the tiny window that looked across towards trees and fields. There was a small pewter jug on the ledge with dried lavender in it, but the lavender was so old it had faded to a dusty grey. Memories swirled and eddied again. I cut this lavender in the garden beyond that window, and I put it in that jug so that the stairs would be filled with the scent. I really was here, thought Jessica, in frightened bewilderment. But when? Why? And why can’t I remember properly?

  Bea opened a door, and there was the room. Jessica stood very still.

  The rocking chair was in the right place, and the padded window-seat with the green and gold chintz cover was right, as well. And there was the bed with the bright brass frame and the quilt made up of silky squares. In the morning the silk caught the light so that you felt as if you were lying in a marvellous lake of bronze and sunshine. She had wanted to draw the bed and paint it as a coloured river, dreamlike and fantastical, like the death journey of the Lily Maid of Astolat. Had she ever done so? And the shelves of books – I know them, thought Jessica, staring at the rows of titles. I’ve read them – those very books.

  They went back downstairs, and Bea put her sketches away in a big folder.

  ‘I’ll put them out of the way for the moment,’ she said. ‘They can stand in the alcove by the fire if I move the fire screen.’

  The fire screen. It was here after all. It was standing in the chimney corner, behind the chair where Jess had been sitting – that was why she had not seen it. As Bea lifted it away from the wall, it was as if a lump of ice had been dropped deep down into Jess’s mind, and as if the impact had flung the memories swirling and foaming upwards.

  The screen was exactly as she had seen it. There were the pasted-on photos, and the bits of old posters of concerts and musical evenings. It had been dragged across the fire that day to hide something that must not be seen …? Never tell … Never tell, Jessica …

  Jessica’s heart was pounding and the palms of her hands were sticky with sweat, because something inside her mind was struggling to get out, and it was something ugly and frightening and unbearably painful …

 
She thought Bea Drury did not realize there was anything wrong. She thought she managed to go on talking quite ordinarily. About painting, about the things she liked to draw and the places in Kilcarne she went to draw them. Presently, she said she thought she should go.

  ‘They’ll want me to help with supper. They always make a bit of a fuss when my cousin Donal’s here.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I hope you’ll come to see me again,’ said Bea. ‘We could maybe go off sketching somewhere one afternoon.’

  ‘I’d like that. I’ll ask if I can.’ Jessica saw that Bea Drury was not used to people having to ask permission for something so ordinary, so she said, ‘They fuss such a lot.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I must try to meet them. Ask them if I can call in some time. And you’ll always be welcome at Tromloy,’ said Bea.

  As Jessica walked away from the house, she felt as if something had dug deep into her mind, peeling back layers of thick scar tissue, exposing still-bleeding wounds.

  She was feeling dizzy, but she tried to snatch the whirling fragments and pin them down. Tromloy. Abigail Drury’s bedroom with the old photograph. The fire screen. And, threading through it all, that dreadful whispering voice, like spiteful scratches against her mind. ‘Never tell, Jessica … People would think you were making up stories … They might shut you away …’

  As she reached the stone with Tromloy engraved on it, the whirling shards fell into place, and finally Jessica saw and knew and understood what lay at the black core of the memories.

  FOURTEEN

  She thought it had been about two years ago – had it been the week after her thirteenth birthday? Two years ago and a bit, then.

  It had still been the Christmas school holidays – the few days after Christmas Day before school started again. For a moment the present-day Jessica came up through the memories, to think: how strange to suddenly know she had been at an ordinary school.

  But on that day two years ago, the aunts had said Jessica could go out sketching, providing she was warmly wrapped up because it was a sharp, frosty day. She must be sure to be home well before it started to get dark. And Donal was coming today, so Jess must be back to welcome him. It was a long time since he had visited them – almost six months – so there would be a lot of news to hear. And Jessica was not to go along any lonely lanes, or speak to anyone she did not know, was that clear?

  Jessica nodded mechanically, but Aunt Morna said, a bit sharply, that she must be extra-careful at the moment, because there had been reports of a tramp wandering around. Mr O’Brien said several people in the bar at O’Brien’s had reported seeing the man. A real ruffian he was, often the worse for The Drink. Both the aunts always referred to any kind of alcohol using capital letters, unless it was Uncle Tormod’s nightly glass of port and brandy, which he took for medicinal purposes, and for which there was apparently biblical approval.

  Jessica did not tell them she had seen the tramp a few times while she was out sketching. People were calling him ‘that old tramp’, but he was not old at all. He moved quickly, like quite a young man, and he did not seem in the least alarming, in fact he always doffed his hat to Jess if he saw her, causing a thick mop of hair to tumble over his forehead. Once or twice he had called out a greeting, and once, when he had walked along a lane where Jess was sketching, he had said something about her looking like a wood nymph or a dryad, curled up against the old tree. Jessica had smiled and said she would like to be a dryad, and he had nodded to himself, as if pleased with the small exchange, and gone on his way. He had been carrying a bottle of something, swinging it along in rhythm with his steps, then lifting it to his lips.

  Jess had thought it was probably unusual for a tramp, no matter how much he might drink, to know about dryads. She would quite like to draw him some time. It would be interesting to see if she could get that careless happiness on paper. This was another thing that could not be said, however, and Aunt Nuala was still tutting about the tramp, what a feckless way for a man to live, it did not bear thinking about. How could such a one get hold of The Drink in the first place, that was what Aunt Nuala would like to know. Aunt Morna said he would have stolen it, of course, wicked shame to him.

  They would go on about the tramp and The Drink and the shame for ages, so Jessica put on a thick coat, wrapped a scarf round her neck, and took the opportunity to go out through the kitchen door.

  This afternoon she wanted to explore a narrow track that led away from the road. There was a tucked-away house somewhere at the top of the track – Jess had occasionally glimpsed it from the road, and she was intrigued.

  She walked through the village, liking that everywhere was still frozen in shades of grey and white, but that there were splashes of colour from where people still had Christmas decorations up. Beyond the village, the road opened on to a main highway into Galway City. Aunt Morna occasionally drove along here if they needed something that could not be got in Kilcarne, and Aunt Nuala generally went with her because Morna did not like driving very much and it was nice to have company in the car. Jess went with them as well, if she could. She would like to go more often, but the aunts said Galway was so busy and loud; you could not hear yourself think, and wasn’t it a relief to get back to Kilcarne’s peace and quiet. Jess liked the buzz and the people, though. When she left school she would like to go to the GMIT – the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, which her art teacher said had a really good art and design course that would end in a Bachelor of Arts degree if Jessica worked hard. From there, the world would be her oyster, said the teacher, who came to the convent school twice a week from Connemara to teach the girls how to draw and paint. She told Jessica that they had a good two years before they needed to plan seriously, but it was something definite and positive to work towards.

  Jess was working towards it already, but there was no need to tell the aunts and Uncle Tormod yet, because it would throw them into a twittering state of anxiety, and Uncle Tormod would probably say universities were whited sepulchres and temples of sin, and the end would be that she would not be allowed to go. She was going to work up to it gradually.

  The tramp was out and about this morning. As Jess drew level with the five-bar gate, she saw him walking across the scrubland beyond it. He might be going anywhere or nowhere. She watched him, trying to fix in her mind the picture he made, because he was wearing a scarlet muffler today, and against the grey January light it would make a really good picture. He was some way off, but he caught sight of her, and lifted his hat and waved it. Jessica waved back. She knew that if she stopped anywhere to sketch, he would not come over and interrupt her, because he liked being on his own. She watched him for a moment, seeing that he was walking quite jauntily; if he had been at The Drink this morning, it was not making him stumble or miss his steps as Uncle Tormod sometimes did last thing at night when he had had a third glass of port and brandy, telling them that St Paul said a little wine could be taken for the stomach’s sake and small infirmities.

  Here were the wobbly signposts that had been about to tumble over ever since Jess could remember, and here was the narrow track just beyond them. Now she was here, it looked a bit lonely, and the aunts would have thrown up their hands in horror at the thought of walking up there, but Jess thought it would be all right. She would only go a little way up, and if she heard anyone coming, she could easily whizz back down to the road. If the house looked as if it would make a good picture, she would draw a few rough outlines, then go back home in time for Donal’s arrival.

  She went up the steep path to the house. There was a chunk of stone on the side of the track with the house’s name carved into it. Tromloy. There were more bits of old stone in the scrubland on each side of the path – they looked like toy bricks, but immense ones, as if they might be from a giant’s toy-store, and as if the giant had become bored with them and tossed them away in a sulk. Moss and lichen grew over some of them, and they might make a good sketch. Jessica would look at the house, then she might come back to these
lovely jumbly stones.

  The house was a little way above the path. It was not very big, and it, too, had the air of having been dropped carelessly from the sky, and as if it had landed in a place where nobody would expect a house to be. It was just about possible to see the smudge of mountains behind it, like layers of coloured cellophane against the sky.

  The house had sloping roof bits, which was really good because the art teacher had set perspectives as a holiday project. Jess thought she would try to get a few of those angles down, and work on them when she got home. She folded up her scarf to sit on, and leaned back against the Tromloy stone. It was a bit cold, but she would not be here very long, and after she began to draw she did not notice the cold anyway. She forgot about the time, and she became absorbed with the picture forming under her pencil. It was starting to look really good. She leaned back to consider it, and it was then she heard footsteps coming up the track towards her.

  She was not particularly worried, although it was a bit lonely out here. Even the tramp had disappeared. Still, she would rather not meet anyone here on her own, so she closed the sketchbook and wondered if she should go up to the house to see if there was a way of getting back down to the road from there.

  The footsteps came around the last part of the track, and a voice that she knew very well indeed, said, ‘Jessica. I hoped I’d find you. The aunts thought you were coming out this way to sketch. So you’ve found Tromloy, have you?’

  It was all right. It was Donal. He was a bit flushed from climbing the steep path and his hair was blown about by the wind, but he was smiling, and saying he had told the aunts he would come out to find her.

  ‘And I called into Dunleary’s on the way and they said they’d seen you go past. So I thought I’d try to find you. It’s bitterly cold, isn’t it, but the car’s just at the foot of the track, on the roadside.’ He was holding out his arms in the way he always did when he came to Kilcarne.