Constable & Toop (20 page)

The ear-piercing scream filled Aysgarth House. Clara sat bolt upright. In her sleepy state she vaguely wondered whether Mrs Preston had seen a mouse again. But the scream grew in volume and intensity and turned into hysterical babbling. Clara quickly dressed and went out onto the landing. Looking down into the hall, she saw Mrs Preston being comforted by her mother. Her father was standing at the kitchen door with Hopkins close behind him.

‘Who is she?' Mrs Preston was managing to say in between her sobs. ‘Who is she?'

‘She's no one,' replied Mrs Tiltman. ‘She's no one.'

Clara stepped onto the stairs. ‘What's happened?' she asked.

‘Clara, go back to your bedroom at once,' barked her father. He spun around and closed the door, but not quickly enough to prevent Clara seeing that the kitchen floor was stained with a dark, red liquid. ‘Clara, do as I say this minute,' ordered Mr Tiltman.

Clara was not used to hearing her father speak in such a way. He looked at her as though daring her to contradict him. She turned and went back to her room but, once she was out of sight, slammed the door shut from the outside and sat down on the landing so she could still hear.

‘Hopkins, go to the police station and fetch an officer,' said her father.

‘Should I not remove the body first, sir?' he replied.

‘The police will take care of such matters,' said Mr Tiltman.

‘But, what about your breakfast, sir?' said Hopkins.

‘Good God, man, that hardly matters at this point,' stated Mr Tiltman.

‘But who is she?' asked Mrs Preston who, in her hysteri­­cal state, appeared unable to say anything else.

‘Please take Mrs Preston into the drawing room,' said Mr Tiltman to his wife. ‘Hopkins will find a street vendor to buy tea on his way back.'

‘But I don't understand who she could be,' said Mrs Preston.

‘The police will deal with these questions,' said Mr Tiltman.

‘That's right, Mrs Preston,' said his wife. ‘You've had a terrible shock.'

‘But the door was locked last night,' continued the cook. ‘How can she have found her way in?'

Mrs Tiltman made no attempt to field these questions as she led the overwrought cook into the drawing room.

‘Now, Hopkins, please make haste,' said Mr Tiltman. ‘The sooner the police get here, the sooner everything will be well. I am sure this is just a terrible accident.'

Clara lingered outside her door for a moment. The temptation to go downstairs and see for herself the horror that she was now imagining was overwhelming, but her father was still down there and she did not want to re-ignite the fury she had seen so she opened her bedroom door quietly and slipped inside. She pressed her back against the door and closed her eyes.

A body. A dead body found in her kitchen. Clara knew she should have felt sickened and scared by the idea, but she did not. She felt excited. Reporters would come to the house. She had read accounts of such stories. They would name it something like
The Gruesome Murder of Aysgarth House
.

Clara wondered if there was something wrong with her that she could feel so excited. But it wasn't just that; something else was different about the house today. The sense of dread had gone. That indefinable, invisible presence that had borne down on her so heavily over the last few days had lifted. The warmth had returned.

There was a dead body in the kitchen and yet, for the first time since Reverend Fallowfield's exorcism of Lady Aysgarth, Clara felt safe in her house.

The only time Emily Wilkins had set foot inside a place as grand as Aysgarth House was when her mother had held the position of maid to a family in Islington. So, even now, standing in the kitchen as a ghost, looking down on her own bloodied body, she didn't feel it would be right to venture beyond those rooms assigned to the servants. She found the sight of her dead self upsetting and was relieved when, at last, Hopkins returned with two police officers to remove the body.

Upon seeing the corpse the younger of the two policemen put his hand to his mouth and retched.

‘Just a street urchin by the looks of things,' said the elder, who had white wispy whiskers sprouting untidily from his chin and neck. ‘Probably got into an argument with her boyfriend.'

‘Bit young for that kind of thing, isn't she, sir?' said the younger man, forcing himself to look.

‘You'd be surprised. I seen 'em younger than this walking the streets. Prettier too.'

‘Funny she should find her way into this house.'

‘Must have found the door open and stumbled in.' The older man walked to the back door and eased it open with the side of his boot. ‘Yep, look. Blood on the handle.'

‘The cook swears she locked it at night,' replied his colleague.

‘That hysterical old bird?' snorted the other. ‘She's worried about losing her position.'

‘But what if it is the truth?'

‘Listen to me, Sidmouth. How long have you been on the beat now?'

‘It's coming up to three months now, sir.'

‘Three months? Twelve years is my tally. And when you've been patrolling these streets as long as I have you get a nose for these kind of things. You have to ask yourself what is more likely, a dappy old cook forgetting to lock a door or a street urchin with her throat cut picking a lock and breaking into a kitchen?'

‘Perhaps it was some kind of burglary gone awry, sir.'

The older man sighed and stepped onto the porch door. ‘You see how the blood leads to the house? You mark my words, this little one gets into some kind of dispute with her fella, has her throat cut, then stagger stagger stagger, plop, she drops dead on the kitchen floor. Come on now, wrap up the body and let's get it out of here.'

The younger man knelt down next to the dead body. Emily floated down to his side, with the strangest feeling, as if she was paying her last respects to herself. The policeman closed her eyelids and set about wrapping up the body for removal. ‘So young,' he muttered under his breath.

‘So young,' repeated Emily.

She felt sorry for the distress she had caused Mrs Preston and for the upset her appearance had caused in the house. She wished she could leave, but the outside wall remained as solid as if she were still alive, so she remained in the kitchen.

After a few hours, her curiosity grew. Since she could not be seen, what harm was there in exploring the rest of the house? Emily stepped through the wall into the hallway, feeling the freedom of the realisation that the rules of the living no longer applied. She drifted up the stairs. The lightness of her new body was disconcerting. It felt as though the merest breeze could destroy her.

The dining room, with its matching green curtains and patterned wallpaper, was beautiful. She poked her head into the cabinets to admire the gleaming silver cutlery and white porcelain plates. She wondered if such objects actually made the food taste better. In the drawing room she wished she was able to enjoy the softness of the cushions. But her favourite room was Clara's bedroom. In spite of her short hair and plain dresses Clara was the handsomest girl she had ever laid eyes on. Emily investigated her wardrobe and found far prettier dresses. She wondered why she chose the dowdier ones. And why did she sit writing at her desk instead of playing with the toys she had hidden away at the back of the cupboard or with the splendid toy theatre by the window?

Emily was sitting by the theatre, admiring its every detail, wishing she could move the pieces, when Clara's gaze drifted up from her desk and she looked straight through her. Emily felt so unnerved by this that she turned to Ether Dust and drifted up to the attic window. She spent the rest of the day looking out on the Strand, thinking how all her life she had endured such squalor, with no possessions, no permanent home, no toys or pretty dresses. Only now in death could she observe what it would have been like to have been born into wealth.

Tanner could see that Jack had fulfilled his side of the bargain when he looked up at the ghost of the girl at the attic window. She was young. Perhaps that had made her easier to coax into the house, but Tanner didn't want to ask how Jack did it. She was there and that was all that mattered. The Black Rot had subsided from Aysgarth House. The house had its ghost. Tanner drew a line through the letter
i
on the list.

‘Satisfied?' muttered Jack into the collar of his black frock coat.

Tanner nodded.

‘Then it's your turn. Follow me.'

Jack walked swiftly through the Aldwych, around Covent Garden, always taking the busiest streets, crossing the road to avoid the police, but also steering clear of the beggars and crooks who frequented the quieter, shadier alleyways.

On one of the roads off the Seven Dials Jack slipped into an alleyway between a pawnbroker's and a second-hand clothes shop. There they remained, watching the passers-by, until he pointed out a man wearing a pale blue coat and carrying a silver-tipped walking stick.

‘That's 'im,' said Jack.

‘Who is he?' asked Tanner.

‘'is name is Reeve.'

‘He looks respectable enough to me,' said Tanner.

‘'E's the biggest ne'er do well in the whole of this stinkin' city.'

‘What do you want me to do? I already told you, I won't go haunting. Tricks is one thing. But scaring attracts the wrong kind of attention.'

‘I told you, I just want you to spy on 'im,' said Jack.

As the man passed tradesmen and shopkeepers on the street they tipped their hats to him. In response he nodded back so benignly that Tanner wondered if Jack wasn't mistaken in his assessment of the man. He tossed a coin into a beggar's hat, then stepped through a door into a pub called The Crown.

‘'Is office is at the back of that pub. I'm interested in anythin' 'e says that relates to me.'

‘What connection do you have with this man?'

‘For many years I worked for 'im.'

‘So what prevents you from approaching him now?' asked Tanner.

‘You ask too many questions. You know what you need to do.'

‘I just find it hard to believe that you and him could have any connection at all,' said Tanner.

‘I ain't asking you to believe anything, just to watch 'im.' Jack chuckled darkly. ‘Besides, Mr Reeve would have the world believe that he is a respectable man. But you mark my words, lad, Mr Reeve is as sinful as the devil 'imself.'

‘If I'm to spend the day doing this then you must continue with your work,' said Tanner.

‘Of course. Give me an address and I'll find you a ghost by nightfall.'

‘Two,' said Tanner. ‘If I am to follow your Mr Reeve all day, you can fill two houses.'

‘Two it is, then.'

Tanner read out two addresses from the list, then drifted across the road to spy on Mr Reeve.

The landlady of the Boar's Head, Mrs O'Twain, hadn't noticed anything especially odd about the man with the three-pointed birthmark on his head who entered the pub as she was ringing the bell for last orders. The Boar's Head was home to as many different kinds of customer as there were kinds of folk in the world. By day it was filled with journalists, drinking and gossiping in the name of work. Businessmen came to escape their offices by day, and their families by night. The rich, the poor, the reputable and the disreputable: every walk of life came through its doors. As her husband used to say, liquor was the great equaliser and you couldn't tell a lord from a chimney sweep when they were under a table.

Mrs O'Twain had served a number of religious men too. Anglicans and Catholics might have argued about what happened to the wine they took at holy communion once it entered the body, but both were agreed on the importance of it going in to begin with.

‘What will it be, padre?' she asked. ‘You're just in time.'

‘You have a spirit,' he replied.

‘We have a wall full of them. Which can I interest you in?' she said, taking his strange manner as indication he had visited a number of public houses prior to arriving at this one.

‘A spirit of a different kind concerns me. My name is Reverend Fallowfield.'

‘You want something you can't see?' she asked, confused.

‘None can see the spirits of which I speak,' he said. ‘Those spirits who walk amongst us. Unhappy souls.'

Mrs O'Twain rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, you're like that girl, are you?'

‘What girl?' demanded Reverend Fallowfield.

‘A well-to-do young lass, she was. Little more than fifteen years, at a guess. But polite enough. She came here asking after my dead husband. I thought she was a . . . well, I don't know what I thought she was, but as it turns out she never knew him in life. She was hoping to meet his ghost.' She chuckled.

‘Her name, this girl?'

‘I never thought to ask. What's all this sudden interest in my husband's ghost, then?'

The priest seemed momentarily lost in thought. By now, a couple of the regulars were listening in.

‘This chap giving you bother?' asked one of them.

‘He says he's interested in my Paddy,' she replied.

‘Debt collector?' asked another.

‘Ghosts are the debts we collect in life,' said Reverend Fallowfield. ‘I pay them off. I banish them to the other side where they belong.'

‘My Paddy never hung around here enough in life, always roaming around looking for more trouble to land himself in. I see no reason he'd linger here in death.'

‘Unless the dead like a drink too,' said one of the regulars, laughing.