Naomi's Room (21 page)

‘And you have a motive?’

He shook his head.

‘Only you know that.’

‘And Ruthven and Lewis – you think I had a motive for those killings too?’

‘Possibly. Ruthven may have been about to uncover something. Lewis as well. That’s quite plausible.’

‘You would not believe the truth,’ I said.

‘Try me,’ he replied.

What could I do? What could I say? I got out the photographs, went through them one by one. He was sceptical at first – who would not have been? – but when we got to the shots Lewis had taken of the attic and its inhabitants, above all those of Caroline and Victoria in their less-than-pretty, less-than-lovable guise, I saw him wince and grow pale.

He was silent after that for several minutes. His eyes strayed to the window. His fingers strayed over the scattered photographs, playing with their edges, then recoiling. They were strong, capable fingers, fingers that could break a man’s arm against a fulcrum. I waited patiently.

‘This is too much for me to take in all at once, Dr Hillenbrand. I don’t know what to make of it, or of you. I find it hard to believe you could be so elaborate, that you could go to such lengths merely to concoct such an implausible story.’

‘You can check Lewis’s film,’ I said. ‘He kept all the negatives. I’m sure you have people who can check a photograph for fraud.’

‘For fraud, yes. But phantoms? Conjurations out of someone’s worst nightmare?’ He paused. ‘I’d like to see this attic of yours, Doctor. If you have a torch, perhaps we can go up now.’

I felt the breath catch in my throat like treacle. Why had I been so blasé, why had I allowed Allison here in the house where so much could go wrong? I looked round desperately for Liddley. My head was spinning, I felt straitjacketed.
Where are you?
I wanted to cry.

‘Are you all right, Doctor?’

‘I . . . I don’t like to go there,’ I said. ‘After what happened. That last time, Lewis and I only just managed to get out unharmed. If we’d stayed . . .’

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to come. Just show me where to go, lend me your torch.’

‘It wouldn’t be safe.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ He was on his feet now.

‘Please . . .’

‘Is something the matter, Dr Hillenbrand?’

I stood as well, shaking my head, playing for time.

‘No, I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘But I warn you, he may be there. You haven’t seen him, you can’t . . .’

He was already through the door, heading for the stairs. I followed him, thinking madly. He had to be stopped, stopped at any cost. I was going out of my mind: to have been so close, to have seen the levers rise and fall with such precision . . .

We got to the door of the attic. I had left the torch on the floor outside. Allison picked it up and opened the door – I had not bothered locking it.

‘This way?’

I nodded. He set off up the stairs with me close behind, my heart pounding, still unable to decide what course of action to take. Why didn’t Liddley do something? Why didn’t he intervene?

At the spot where the staircase ended and the floor began, Allison turned to me, shivering.

‘You were right,’ he said. ‘It’s freezing up here. Enough to freeze your balls off.’

He was not an unintelligent man, not lacking in sophistication of a certain low order, but that sudden descent into coarseness hardened me towards him. I was grateful for it, grateful for the justification I knew it would give me for what I had to do. I was thinking of the bricks, the ones I had helped Lewis knock out of the wall, thinking how edged and sharp they were, how easy it would be to pick one up, to lift it, to bring it down . . .

Far below, the doorbell rang. We both froze. I realized that, in spite of everything, Allison was nervous of coming up here. The bell rang again, a longer burst.

‘It must be Sergeant Arkless,’ Allison said. ‘I told him to ring if any messages came through for me.’

Another ring, accompanied by three loud knocks.

When we got downstairs, I opened the door to find Allison’s driver standing on the step. I stepped aside to let Allison past.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’

‘London on the radio, sir. You’ve got to get back straight away. There’s been a cock-up with our man, with De la Mere, sir.’

‘What sort of cock-up?’

Arkless hesitated, glancing at me.

‘Go on, man.’

‘Done himself in, sir. So it seems. But it could be . . . Trubshaw was in charge at the time, sir.’

‘I see. All right, Arkless. Get on the blower, tell them I’m coming back straight away.’

Arkless nodded and went back to the car. Allison turned to me. His face was working, the eyes especially. They were full of the let-down he was feeling, the disappointment, the anger, the impotence. Anger and impotence go well together.

‘It looks as if there won’t be any point in your accompanying me to London after all, Dr Hillenbrand. Take care of yourself. I’ll be back tomorrow. And I’d be grateful if you could ring your wife and ask her to join us. There are some questions I’d like to ask her.’

I had to act quickly. There was no time to waste. Liddley would be disappointed, of course, he would have to forgo the fun he had waited for all this time. But Allison had given me no choice. However short-lived, the reprieve had renewed my conviction that all things were running to my pleasure.

I found a heavy broom and a smaller dustbrush in the cupboard beneath the stairs and carried them up to the attic. The late afternoon sun had laid a bed of red and yellow coals all along the wooden floor. I crossed to the shutters and closed them firmly against the light. The room was cold with a dark coldness, the air in it monstrously raw and aching. The smell still lay on everything, tinging the cold with sadness and a premonition of impermanence. There was no sign of Liddley, but I could hear a voice nearby, a child’s voice, singing softly. It made my flesh creep, but I knew I had to go through with what I had started.

At the gap in the partition wall I paused and looked into the inner room. The oil-lamp was lit, casting its flat light on cobwebs and ugly faded wallpaper. Naomi was crouched on the floor near her mother, crooning to her gently. It was a song I had taught her, the haunting melody little Pearl sings in
Night of the Hunter.

Once upon a time, there was a pretty fly,

He had a pretty wife, who could not fly,

But one day she flew away, flew away.

She had two pretty children

But one night those two pretty children

Flew away, flew away, into the sky, into the moon . . .

When she had finished, Naomi looked up at me and smiled. Daddy’s little girl smiling for Daddy coming home.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said.

I shut my eyes. I could not bear to see her, to listen to her. In the past weeks I had been through so much, but this was unendurable.

‘Mummy’s not well,’ she said. ‘She wants to sleep all the time. And Auntie Carol’s terrible sick as well. Like Caroline and Victoria and their mummy sometimes. What are we going to do, Daddy?’

I could not keep my eyes closed. Reluctantly, I opened them and looked at her.

‘I don’t know, darling,’ I said.

‘Why are you crying, Daddy? Is it because Mummy’s not well?’

‘Yes,’ I said. How could she not know? I thought the dead knew everything. Of course, I know better now. The dead know as little as ourselves. They are ourselves: transfigured, but not made new.

Laura and Carol were in a semi-stupor. It will be kinder this way, I thought. But I had forgotten him, him and his needs. I went to look at Carol. Even with the heroin, I could see she was in great pain.

‘I have to go now, Daddy,’ Naomi said. I thought of her as Naomi now, I had dropped the pretence that she was a monstrosity in my daughter’s shape.

I looked round. She was no longer there. I switched off my torch and in the light of the lamp started brushing rubble from the main attic into the bricked-off chamber. Any complete or near-complete bricks I found in the pile, I separated from the rest, stacking them neatly. I kept back a small pyramid of dust and grit, just to one side of the opening, in the main attic.

When I had done all this, I took my torch and broom and returned downstairs. The light had all but faded from the sky. It was like a face from which the colour and the life had been drained. Like Jessica’s face in the light of my torch. I found a hammer and chisel in my toolbox.

In the southwest corner of the garden, there was an old wall surrounding a small vegetable patch. It was in a state of poor repair, and it took me little effort to prise away all the bricks I thought I would need. Most of them just came away in my hand, the mortar crumbling, as though by natural collapse.

From the garage I took a trowel and a small sack of cement. I carried the entire load upstairs in half a dozen trips, set it down, and rested, sitting on the stack of bricks I had made. It was then I heard him, his dark breathing behind me, then his voice that still froze my blood.

‘I perceive all you do, sir. You mean to make an end of it, do you not?’

I said nothing. How tired I was, how tired.

‘Come, sir, come, we are past this. Do not be so aloof.’

‘They were nearly found today,’ I said. ‘The man who came here was a police Inspector.’

‘I know nothing of police, sir. Are you not master in your own house? There were men who came here in my own time. I promise you, they did not venture so far.’

‘Things have changed,’ I said. ‘He can bring a warrant if he wishes, search the house from top to bottom. It’s better this way.’

‘He could be dealt with.’

‘No!’ I exclaimed. I was sharp with him. In all this time, I had not once turned round. ‘That would be stupid, it would lead them straight here. Leave things as they are. Don’t interfere.’

‘We have tonight,’ he said.

I put my hands over my ears, but I could still hear him, soft and insidious, his voice mellifluous as honey. He came round from behind until he was right in front of me. I could not help but look at him.

‘They will not return until tomorrow morning at the earliest. The work you have in mind will not take long. There is time enough to pleasure us.’

‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked. It would only be a matter of time, I thought, before Allison found out.

Liddley was silent for a moment.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. I have always known. Before you knew yourself.’

‘You used me,’ I complained.

‘We use each other. It has always been that way. The living use the dead, the dead the living.’

‘That’s no excuse.’

‘I do not excuse myself. My actions need no excuse. Once the bounds are broken . . .’

I tried to stand. He stared me down, he used a force stronger than anything material.

‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘To remember them by.’

Even as he spoke, I could feel his strength filling me. I could feel my duality become pure singleness. Another night would pass quickly. Too quickly.

*   *   *

In the morning, soon after dawn by my watch, I mixed the cement and laid the bricks row upon row as well as I was able. It was by no means a perfect job, but it did not have to be. I smeared dirt and grime on the fresh mortar. When I had finished, I took with the greatest care strands of cobweb from other parts of the attic and laid them on the brick wall. In the light of my torch, the join could scarcely be seen. Inside, they were still alive. But only just.

Allison returned later that morning. He was not a happy man. Since his return to London the day before, he had hardly spent a moment away from the station. De la Mere had torn a strip from the blanket in his cell, rolled it into a tight ball, and rammed it down his own throat, choking himself to death. The presence of vomit in the cell suggested that it had taken him several attempts. Inspector Allison was not in a good mood.

‘Why didn’t you tell me before about your mother?’ That was the first question he asked. He had been quicker than I had anticipated.

‘My mother? Why didn’t I tell you what?’

‘That her maiden name was Liddley.’

I looked long at him, as though realization were dawning. But I had known all along, of course.

‘It never occurred to me that it could be relevant to this,’ I lied. ‘It’s not an uncommon name. You can’t think to implicate my mother in this.’

‘I don’t know what to think, Dr Hillenbrand. Is your mother another descendant of John Liddley? Or is John Liddley just a figment of your imagination? I suggested earlier that you might be Liddley yourself. That hypothesis begins to look more and more attractive to me. It would be plausible for you to adopt your mother’s name.’

‘I told you before, that’s perfectly ridiculous.’

‘Is it? Do you teach such logic to your students?’

‘I am not a logician.’

‘Clearly.’

‘You saw the photographs.’

‘I’m a police officer, Dr Hillenbrand, not a magician.’

‘Nevertheless, I beseech you to use your imagination.’

‘So you admit that’s all Liddley is: someone you dreamed up?’

I grew irritable.

‘I admit nothing of the sort. Liddley was real.
Is
real. That fact can be proved in any decent library. You can see his letters in Downing College.’

‘Perhaps. But we can talk about that later. In the meantime, I have a warrant to search these premises.’

‘Be my guest,’ I said. What had I to fear?

‘And I wish to speak to your wife. Has she got back from Northampton yet?’

I had decided to make little of Laura’s disappearance.

‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but she isn’t here. She isn’t in Northampton either. I rang her yesterday as you asked, but I got no reply. I tried again all yesterday evening. And this morning. I’ve tried Carol’s office, but nobody there knows anything.’

‘First your daughter goes missing, then your wife and sister.’

‘What are you implying, Inspector?’

‘I’m not sure yet. First of all, I’d like to make that search.’

He brought a constable from the car, and together they went to the attic. I accompanied them, watching from the shadows as they went about their task. They were uneasy. It never occurred to them to open the shutters. They carried out their search by the light of torches, passing again and again in front of the wall behind which Laura and Carol lay bleeding to death. They found nothing, of course.