Night Music (15 page)

But all that came later. For now there was only the house, its windows hooded, like the eyes of a hawk, by the ubiquitous blackout curtains. They did not enter by the front but climbed the still-intact wall that surrounded the back garden and found, not entirely to their surprise, that the door there was unlocked. Once inside, they saw that the tidy little kitchen, with its pine table and two chairs, was lit by a candle encased in a glass lamp, and similar candles illuminated the hall. Beneath the stairwell was a locked door, leading down, they assumed, to a cellar. They heard no sound but the ticking of an unseen clock.

It was Knight who first noticed the patterns on the walls in the hall, taking them initially to be some strange manner of floral wallpaper and then, as he drew nearer, deciding—still erroneously—that what he was seeing was a network of cracks in the plaster, almost like the craquelure on the surface of a painting. Knight had shared little of his background with Felder and the others. Equally, they did not trouble themselves to inquire into another man's business if it did not concern them, especially when the man in question gave no sign that such an intrusion would give him great pleasure in any case, but Felder had come to realize that Knight knew something of art and literature, and was better educated than his thick accent might have led one to believe. In fact, Knight came from a house filled with paintings, and a family that talked easily of abrasure and blanching, gesso and glair. Had he been privy, before he died, to the insights gifted to Felder, then he might have appreciated more the story told by the patterns on the walls.

Both men drew closer, Felder's fingers reaching out to trace what was gradually revealed to be ink work on the otherwise unadorned walls of the house, an intricate design that resembled most closely the thin branches of some form of creeping briar, as though the interior had been invaded by a pestilential vegetation, its greenery now lost to the harsh breath of winter, had it ever enjoyed such foliage to begin with. The effect was further enhanced by the addition of red dots at apparently random points, like fruits somehow clinging to a dead bush. Beside each red sphere was a pair of initials: E.J., R.P., L.C., but never the same combination of letters twice.

And although it was impossible to find a logic to the entirety of the tracery, it seemed to Felder and Knight that, on an individual level, its creator began with a single line which then split after an inch or so, one channel continuing on to divide again while the other terminated in a horizontal dash over the vertical, like a dead end. Yet even here deviations from the norm sometimes occurred in the form of a series of dashes that, on occasion, eventually found their way back to the main thread. Similarly, numbers were appended to certain lines, which Felder took to be dates or, in particularly involved cases, hours, minutes, and seconds. The designs entirely covered the walls, a few even extending onto the ceiling itself: a stepladder by the front door permitted access. The tracery continued along the wall beside the stairs and, Felder presumed, up to the floor above their heads. The kitchen, by contrast, appeared devoid of any adornments, largely because it was barely spacious enough to accommodate its cupboards, sink, and a four-ring gas cooker, until Knight, in a fit of curiosity, returned there and opened one of the cupboard doors, revealing a further network of bifurcating branches drawn, and even sometimes cut, into the interior paneling.

Again, waiting for death—
a
death—to approach, Felder perceived another crucial moment here, a point in events when lives might have been saved, when both men could have turned and left the house, for although they had not yet spoken, still their mutual unease was evident on their faces. Then Felder thought of Billy Hill, and a share in the wealth that the war was bringing to those ruthless enough to seize opportunities when they were offered. Hill would not have faltered in the face of such inky manifestations of madness. Instead, he would have reckoned the creator more vulnerable still to his predations, and honed in on easy pickings.

Beyond the kitchen lay a dining room, empty and dusty, with a closed pair of interconnecting doors leading to the front room. As with the hall, the walls were covered with lines.

Only now did Felder become aware of a presence in the front room, the one in which he had earlier glimpsed the rugs and paintings and, most interesting of all, the glass-fronted silverware cabinet. It was the merest shifting of shadow against shadow, and the slightest exhalation of breath. A chair creaked, and Felder recognized the sounds of a sleeper responding to some small disturbance, such as the unfamiliar noise created by two men entering a house that was not theirs. Footsteps shuffled on carpet. The door began to open.

Knight reacted first. He was past Felder before the older man could even make a determination of the situation. Knight pushed hard against the door. There was a single shout—a female voice, old and querulous—and then a series of muffled impacts beneath which Felder discerned the breaking of fragile bones, like a quail being consumed behind closed lips.

Felder entered the room to find Knight straddling an old woman on the floor, one knee on her chest, his fist raised to strike, her eyes already assuming the strange vacancy of shock. Felder gripped Knight's wrist before he could hit her again.

“Stop!” he said. “For Christ's sake, you'll kill her!”

He felt the downward pull of Knight's right hand, the urge to harm, and then the tension went out of the younger man. Knight rose slowly and wiped his hand across his face. Knight rarely acted in this way, with heat and anger. He was, by nature, a cold being, and seemed startled by his own rage.

“I—” said Knight. He looked down at the old woman and shook his head. “I—” he repeated, but nothing more came to him.

Felder knelt and gently took the woman beneath the chin, turning her head so that she was facing him. Her nose was broken, that much was clear, and her left eye was already closing. He thought that Knight might also have broken her left cheekbone, maybe even damaged the eye socket itself. Her mouth was bloodied, the upper lip split, but, as with Knight, something of her true self was now returning after the attack. Her right eye grew bright. She tried to rise. Felder helped her to her feet, aided by Knight, even though the woman weighed little more than the clothing she wore, and they almost carried her between them to the armchair in which she had been dozing.

“Get her some water,” said Felder, “and a cold cloth.”

Knight did as he was told. Tenderly, Felder brushed a length of gray hair back from the woman's face and tucked it behind her right ear.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “That wasn't meant to happen.”

The woman didn't respond. Her undamaged eye merely regarded Felder with a kind of disappointment.

Knight returned, a dripping tea towel in one hand, a cup in the other. From the right pocket of his jacket, Felder noticed, peeked a bottle of brandy. Felder reached for the cloth, but Knight paused at the door, his eye fixed on the wall in which the window lay. Felder followed his gaze: more lines, more forks, more patterns, more red, inky berries. On three sides the walls were filled with bookcases and cabinets. Only here, around the window, was there space to continue the house's peculiar decoration.

“Never mind all that,” said Felder. “Give me the towel.”

His words broke the spell, and Knight handed over the wet cloth and the cup of water. Felder cleaned away some of the blood. He had hoped that a little pressure might also keep the swelling down on the damaged eye, but when he touched the towel to the area the woman gave a pained yelp, and Felder knew that his initial suspicion had been correct: Knight had broken some of the bones in her orbital rim. Felder forced her to take water, then emptied the rest onto the rug and indicated that Knight should fill the cup with brandy instead. Knight opened the bottle, took a long draft for himself, and then poured two fingers of brandy into the cup. Felder made the woman drink once more, and used the cloth to wipe away the trickle that dribbled down her chin.

“It'll help,” he said.

He hooked her hand around the cup. Her respiration was shallow, as though it pained her to take deep breaths. Again Felder saw Knight's left knee buried in the woman's tiny, flat chest. He held his hand over the spot, not wanting to touch her breast.

“Does it hurt here?” he asked.

She gave a small nod. Felder looked away.

“You should go,” said the old woman. She spoke the words on an exhalation, wheezing them out.

“What?” said Felder.

“You should go. They won't like it.”

“Who?”

“You told me that she lived alone!” said Knight. A clean blade appeared in his hand, extending itself like tempered moonlight.

“Shut up,” said Felder, his attention fixed on the woman. “Who?” he asked again, but she did not reply, and her right eye flicked away from him to the bookshelves over the fireplace.

Felder stood. He turned to Knight.

“If anyone else lived here we'd have heard from them with that racket you made,” he said. “Still, search the house. We're in this now, and we may as well milk it for all we can. Jewelry, money, you know the drill.”

“Why don't you ask her where she keeps it all?”

“Have you seen the size of this house? It's not Buckingham Palace. There can't be more than a few rooms upstairs.”

“I know, but—”

“Maybe you want to hit her again, see if you can kill her this time.”

Knight had the decency to look ashamed.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

Felder reached under his coat and untied the strings that held the sack in place. He indicated the silverware with his chin.

“I'll take care of that lot. Now get a move on.”

Knight appeared to be on the verge of saying something more, but he knew better than to argue with Felder, especially with the old woman bleeding before him. Felder would take him to task later for his loss of control, once they were safely away from here. Knight left the room, and Felder heard his heavy tread as he ascended the stairs. When he looked back at the old woman, she was smiling at him.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

She coughed, and a spray of red blood shot from between her lips.

“For killing me.”

•  •  •

Under the gaze of the old woman, Felder emptied the silverware into his sack. It was good stuff. He'd been a little worried that it might turn out to be plate, although his expert eye, in that first short glance through the window, had told him otherwise. The weight was considerable, but the sack was thick and strong and had not let him down yet. His only concern now was to get it all to safety without being stopped by the police or the wardens, for there would be no explaining away a sack full of silver.

Felder had chosen to ignore the woman's recent words to him. She'd taken a couple of blows to the head, and who knew how badly it had scrambled her thoughts? Once the cabinet was empty he made a cursory search of the shelves and drawers, but found only a few florins and half crowns wrapped in a handkerchief, and a gent's gold pocket watch engraved with three initials and a date in 1912. He considered putting it in the sack as well, but then slipped it into his jacket pocket for fear that it might be damaged amid the silverware. From upstairs he heard the sounds of Knight rummaging through wardrobes and drawers.

Felder lit a cigarette and took in his surroundings. During his search of the room he couldn't help but notice the nature of the books on its shelves. None of them were titles that he recognized, not that Felder was much for reading, but most appeared to be scientific volumes.

“Were these your husband's?” he asked the woman. “A son, maybe?”

The bright right eye fixed itself upon him.

“Mine,” she said.

Felder raised an eyebrow. In his world, women didn't read books on science. They hardly read anything at all. Like rumors of lost tribes in Africa, and monsters in Scottish lochs, Felder had heard of women scientists, but he had yet to meet one himself, and so remained uncertain of their actual existence.

“You a scientist, then?”

“Once.”

“What kind?”

“A physicist, although I have qualifications in chemistry, too.”

“What are you, then: Professor Lyall?”

If she was surprised that he knew her name, she did not show it.

“Doctor Lyall,” she said.

“Doctor Lyall the physicist. And all this”—Felder gestured at the patterns on the wall—“is physics?”

Lyall gave another cough, but there was only a little blood this time. Her breathing seemed to have eased somewhat. It might have been a sign that her condition was improving, but Felder doubted it. He suspected that it was her body relaxing into death. He wanted Knight to hurry up. Once they were away from the house, they'd find a telephone booth and call for an ambulance. It might not be too late to save her.

“Quantum physics,” she said.

“What's that, then?”

“The study of the universe at the smallest levels.”

“Huh.” Felder took another drag on his cigarette and moved closer to the wall. “But what does it all mean?”

He saw her almost smile.

“You want science lessons from me?”

“Maybe, or it could be that I just want to keep you talking, because if you're talking then you're awake, and alive. We'll get help for you, I promise. It won't be long now. But just try to stay conscious.”

“It's too late for that.”

“No, it's not. Talk to me. Tell me about these quantum physics.”

She took another sip of brandy.

“There is a theory,” said Lyall, “that there are an infinite number of possible existences, and each time we make a decision, one of those possible existences comes into being. But equally, alongside it may exist all other possible, or probable, existences, too. It's more complex than that, but I'm keeping it as simple as I can.”