The Sin Eater (4 page)

As she sat in the train from Oxford to Paddington, she wondered if there were likely to be any ghosts in Holly Lodge. Michael would have said most old buildings had ghosts – the ghosts of the happinesses and sadnesses that had left imprints on the bricks and stones and timbers. Nell smiled, thinking how serious and absorbed Michael looked when his interest was caught.

It was nice to be part of the buzz and life of London again, although the noise and the crowds were slightly disconcerting after the relative calm of Oxford. In the jam-packed tube, Nell had a sudden reassuring image of Quire Court and its serene old stones, and the faint sound of chimes from one of Oxford's many churches politely and unobtrusively marking the hours.

Benedict Doyle's house was fairly near to the tube and the streets here were not quite so busy. Nell, following Nina's directions, enjoyed the short walk; she liked speculating about the people who lived or worked here, and who shopped at the smart-looking boutiques or ate in the restaurants. She was interested in meeting Nina's cousin, whose parents had been killed when he was the same age as Beth had been when Brad died.

Here was the road, and halfway along it was Holly Lodge. Clearly this had once been a fairly prosperous residential area, but only a few of the houses seemed to be still privately owned. Holly Lodge looked a bit forlorn, but Nina had said it had been empty for two years, so Nell supposed it was entitled to look forlorn. But as she went up the short driveway, she realized her skin was prickling with faint apprehension. This was absurd and also annoying. She had encountered more than one vaguely sinister old house in the course of her career, and if Holly Lodge seemed sinister it was only because most of the curtains were closed and the shrubbery at the front was overgrown, obscuring the downstairs windows.

Nell pushed back a wayward holly branch and thought if Michael were here he would start to weave improbable stories about the place for Beth, and the two of them would egg each other on, and end up with a fantastical modern-day version of Sleeping Beauty. But as far as Nell was concerned, this was nothing more than a large Victorian house, which might yield some useful and profitable things for her shop.

There was no response to her knock, but she was a bit early and Benedict Doyle might not have got here yet. Or he might be here working at the back of the house and not heard the door knocker. Nell made her way through an iron gate at the side and along a narrow path which had weeds growing through the cracks. She peered through the downstairs windows, then stepped back, shading her eyes to see the upper ones. Was there a movement up there? Yes. And he had seen her. Nell waved and he beckoned to her to come inside.

‘Well, can you unlock the front door and let me in?' called Nell, pleased to have found him, although feeling a bit ridiculous to be standing in the middle of a garden, shouting to someone she could barely see. ‘Or is there a door open somewhere?'

He pointed downwards to the French windows. Nell gestured an acknowledgement, and tried the handle. It turned, the door swung open, and she stepped inside.

Benedict had managed to keep Declan Doyle out of his mind for almost the entire journey from Reading. Instead, he concentrated on Christmas: on the parties he would be attending, and on an essay he had to write over the Christmas holiday on unusual and unpublicized crimes in the nineteenth century. If he could find some really quirky cases, and if he did try for a PhD later on, it might form the basis of his doctorate.

He had allowed sufficient time to have a couple of hours on his own at Holly Lodge, and had bought a pack of sandwiches and a can of Coke at Paddington so he could have some lunch while doing some preliminary sorting out.

It was midday when he reached the house. Over the years he had built up an image of it in his mind, until it resembled a cross between Sauron's Mount Doom in
Lord of the Rings
and a
pied à terre
belonging to the Addams family. But standing outside now, he saw it was perfectly ordinary – perhaps a bit more decrepit than it had been twelve years earlier, but nothing that could not be cured by a few coats of paint and several sessions with a mower.

As he unlocked the door he reminded himself that his mirror ghost was nothing more than an unusual experience during a tragic time in his childhood. A rogue image, half-seen in an old glass, created by any number of peculiar, but explicable, circumstances.

As he stepped into the big hall, the house's empty staleness breathed into his face. Ghost-breath, thought Benedict. No, it's more likely to be damp or mice. But the sensation that something inside the house was breathing and living increased. Declan, he thought, and unease stirred his mind, like hundreds of glinting needle-points jabbing into it.

The furniture in most of the rooms was shrouded in dust sheets, making them seem eerie and slightly menacing. Benedict's footsteps echoed as he walked through them, recognizing them from that long-ago afternoon. Here was the big drawing-room where Aunt Lyn had dispensed sherry and coffee that afternoon, and people had speculated as to why his parents had been driving through the blizzard that last day. Behind the drawing room was the study where he had seen his grandfather's calendar and diary, with the 18th marked so vividly and so strangely. He had always thought he would one day try to find out what that appointment had been, but he never had.

He went up to the first floor. As he reached the main landing there was a blurred movement at the far end, as if someone who had been standing there had darted back into the shadowy recess of a deep, tall window. The curtains moved slightly, and Benedict's heart came up into his mouth. Someone here? Maybe it was an ordinary, down-to-earth burglar. Given a choice, Benedict would rather meet a housebreaker than a ghost. He took a deep breath and went forward, reaching out for the curtains, and snatching them back before he could beat a cowardly retreat down the stairs.

There was nothing there. There was just the window, smeary with dust and damp with condensation. Or was there the faint imprint on the faded window seat, as if someone had been crouching there? And had someone traced a faint ‘D' in the moisture on the glass?

Benedict looked down at the monochrome gardens, then stepped back from the window. The doors of the main bedrooms were all open, and nothing stirred within any of them. He would look at them in more detail later; for now he would go up to the second floor, where the solicitors had stored the valuable contents of the house. They had sent Benedict an inventory, along with the keys for the two locked rooms. Initially, they had wanted all valuables to be removed; however much care was taken over tenants, there was still a risk that valuable contents might get damaged, they said. But no one in the family had room to store them, and professional storage for the years until Benedict was twenty-one would have been ruinous, so this compromise had been agreed. The solicitors visited the house two or three times a year to make sure none of the tenants had loaded the entire contents on to a van at dead of night and made off with it to the nearest fence.

There were four rooms on the second floor, including the one where Declan's photograph had been. Benedict had intended to leave Nell West to explore the room's contents and take whatever might be valuable to sell in her shop, but now he was here, he was aware of a strong compulsion to see what the room might yield. There might be clues to his great-grandfather's life – things that might prove, or disprove, those details about Ireland and the ancient watchtower on the Cliffs of Moher. As he unlocked the door his heart was beating furiously; he thought if he had been seeing Holly Lodge as Tolkien's Mount Doom all these years, he had certainly been seeing this room as Bluebeard's seventh chamber. Or would it turn out to be Looking-Glass land after all?

But the room was bland and ordinary and, if there were any ghosts, they were keeping a low profile. There were five or six large boxes and tea chests, and a few pieces of furniture. He would go through the boxes with Nell when she got here, but he already knew he would not want any of the furniture – he particularly would not want the big dressing table with its triple mirror which had given that disturbing reflection all those years ago. But there was a small bureau which was rather nice. He pulled an old kitchen chair across and sat down to take a closer look. The front flap was stuck with the accreted dust of years, but it eventually dropped down into a writing-desk-top, and the scent of old wood and dust drifted up.

Inside the bureau were several pigeonholes, some containing yellowing notepaper with the Holly Lodge address, others with envelopes and books of old stamps whose value was a penny and twopence. There was also an old inkstand and a small blotter, but that seemed to be all. Benedict, who had been half-expecting to find locked-away secrets, was disappointed, but as he was about to close the bureau, he saw several sheets of newspaper folded at the back. Probably they were only makeshift drawer-liners, but he might as well glance at them.

They were not drawer-liners. They were cuttings from some long-ago newspaper or magazine, and the dates were the late 1890s. Declan's era, thought Benedict, reaching for them. He unfolded the first and saw that the headline referred to a
cause célèbre
in the late 1890s – a series of killings which had apparently been known as the Mesmer Murders.

This sounded interesting, and Benedict thought he would read it while he ate his lunch. The articles would not have any connection with Declan, but they might be useful for the criminology essay. And the name bestowed on the killer was unusual enough to warrant a further look. He retrieved his sandwiches from his jacket, and returned to the bureau.

There had been, it seemed, five victims of the Mesmer Murderer – three men and two women. One of the women's bodies had been found in her own house, but the others had been found in Canning Town, near the river, close to an old sewer outlet. One theory was that the killer had intended to dispose of those victims in the river but had been interrupted. The newspaper would not distress its readers with the details, but the killings had been violent.

Benedict thought Canning Town was a part of London's docklands that had not been much developed yet. Bodies in Victorian docklands did not, on the face of it, seem to form much of a base for an essay, never mind a doctoral thesis, but somebody in this house had thought it worth keeping these. He reached for another sandwich and unfolded the next cutting, which focused more on the victims than on the police investigations. Benedict took a large bite of his sandwich and read on.

A curious fact linked the victims. Immediately before their deaths they had all referred to an appointment that must be kept – an appointment about which they refused to disclose information. ‘He cancelled everything to keep the appointment,' said the sister of one victim. ‘Even an important church meeting that had been arranged for months.'

All the victims, without exception, had marked on their calendars or diaries the date on which they had met their death.

‘And very elaborately marked, as well,' said the sister. ‘Red ink and curly scrolls. Entirely out of character. A plain note in his diary was what he'd make if he had a business appointment at his work, not something a child might draw on a calendar for its birth date.'

The paper's editor had added a note at this point, to say that the business concern in question was a small printing firm in Islington, of which the man had been general manager.

A female victim, described as an actress and artists' model, had apparently told a female friend that she had an engagement which she thought might bring her a good sum of money.

‘That's all she would say,' the friend was quoted as saying. ‘But she was in a kind of dream about it – like those people you see being mesmerized in the music halls. Afterwards I found her diary, and she had drawn a picture round the date and the time, as if she thought it was going to be a really important day for her.'

The wife of a third victim described the calendar markings in more detail. ‘Every single calendar and diary in the house was marked,' she said. ‘It sounds a bit fanciful, but my brother plays chess, and the outline my husband drew on the calendars looked exactly like a chess piece.'

A chess piece. Benedict stared at the page, his sandwich forgotten. That's what I saw that day, he thought. That was the outline on the calendar and the desk diary in this house all those years ago. One of my parents – or my grandfather – sketched the outline of a chess piece on that date on the calendar. Only I didn't recognize it then.

There was not much point in searching the house for the calendar and the desk diary, but Benedict did not need to. He could still see them clearly. A chess piece – perhaps a pawn – drawn around the date in red ink. And a smaller, similar, sketch around the time of three p.m.

Just over a hundred years ago, five people had been hell-bent on keeping a mysterious appointment on that date and at that time. They had drawn the outline of a chess piece on their calendars. All five had died. Twelve years ago, Benedict's parents and his grandfather had done the same thing and they had died as well.

But the people in the 1890s were murdered, he thought. My parents weren't murdered.

‘
Weren't they, Benedict? Can you be sure of that? A driver can be forced to swerve on an icy road because he thinks he's seen someone standing in the road . . . Someone who never came forward to give evidence and who was never traced
. . .'

The words came raggedly, as if time had frayed them, but it was Declan's voice, soft and with that recognizable Irish lilt. Benedict frowned and tried to push it away. This was sheer nerves, nothing more; it was purely because this house had such bad memories for him. Declan no longer existed; he had been dead for more than fifty years.

But these newspapers existed, and the facts in them were real. He continued reading. The article, having finished reporting on the victims' families, next seized on the remark about mesmerism, and told its readers that one theory suggested the killer had made use of this contentious practice; that he could have somehow planted in each victim's mind the command to be at a specific place on a specific date. This did not give a motive, but when did a madman need a motive?