Property of a Lady (37 page)

I’ve managed to drag Crutchley’s body back to the chair behind the desk and prop it upright. He has no heartbeat – I’m quite sure he’s dead. I shall have to read the journal, of course – it’s almost certain he will have recorded seeing me kill Elizabeth.

Dare I take the journal back to Mallow to read? No, it’s too much of a risk. It could be seen – there are callers to the house. The vicar from St Paul’s has been twice already, and there will be people from Brank Asylum, to talk about Elvira.

Elvira . . . She went so obediently into that place. I could wish she had resisted and cried, but she did not. She sat in a corner of the room as I talked to the doctors, her big dark eyes fixed on me. Delusional, I said. Given to fits of hysterical rage. At such times I can’t control her – she bites and screams and sees nightmare figures while awake.

‘Nightmare figures?’ said the doctor.

‘Men wrapped in black cloaks she believes mean her harm – although she can’t describe what that harm could be.’ I had thought very carefully about this beforehand – it seemed to me that this was more believable, more sinister, than the traditional child’s terrors of giants and witches.

They agreed to keep her with them for a few days to see if some form of calming treatment could be given. For the moment that will have to suffice, although I will have to think of some better solution. The memories were starting to come back to Elvira, and I can’t risk her telling people she saw me kill her mother, I cannot . . .

It’s two o’clock, and for now I shall return home. But tomorrow night I shall come back here, very late, and sit in this room and read Crutchley’s outpourings. If there is anything damning in them, I shall burn them in the stove above this room.

29th November

So. So Crutchley knew it all. More, he
caused
it. For if he had not crept out to Mallow that night with his stupid superstitions and the repulsive lump of graveyard flesh . . . Well, perhaps Elizabeth would still be alive and I should not be a haunted man, going in fear of discovery. The irony is that he could have had her, just as any man could have had her. She was not discriminating, the harlot.

He still sits where I left him last night, stiffening in death’s grotesque pose, his eyes wide open and staring at nothing. Or are they? Aren’t they staring at
me
? Just as Elvira’s eyes do . . .

Elvira. Spawn of God-knows what pot boy or stable lad.

I can’t bear Crutchley’s dead eyes watching me. I have walked round this room and swung quickly round to take them by surprise, and each time they are fixed on me.
Something still lives behind those dead eyes . . .

In Crutchley’s workshop upstairs are a number of tools for the fashioning of intricate clock mechanisms – I saw them while I hid there, waiting for him. Tiny, sharp-ended implements they are – miniature chisels and screwdrivers. Among them are several long needles . . .

It was easier than I expected.

When I return tomorrow to finish reading the journals and destroy them, the man will no longer stare at me with that condemnation and knowledge. He will no longer be able to stare at anyone or anything, for he no longer has any eyes. He will have to feel his way through eternity.

Tomorrow afternoon I must go out to Brank Asylum. They will allow me to see Elvira – they will leave me alone with her. She will stare at me with those accusing eyes – silent and condemning, just as Crutchley’s did. I don’t think I can bear that.

But I still have the long needle in my pocket . . .

TWENTY-EIGHT

N
ell and Michael came up out of the last years of the nineteenth century with difficulty. The journal ended with William Lee’s avowal to visit Elvira.

‘But afterwards he never went back to the underground room,’ said Michael, eventually. The room had been silent for so long that the sound of his voice was slightly startling.

‘He couldn’t,’ said Nell. ‘Look at the date on the last entry. The twenty-ninth of November. And according to that newspaper article he was arrested on the thirtieth. He had no chance to go back.’

‘And Brooke’s body was never found,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘William blinded him, didn’t he? Put out his eyes. Even though Brooke was dead, William believed he was watching him – knowing him to be Elizabeth’s killer.’

‘I hope Brooke
was
dead when he did it,’ said Nell, uneasily. ‘I hope that blow to the head didn’t send him into some sort of coma. But Michael, you realize it’s been Brooke we’ve been seeing or hearing – or the residue of him, or something. I don’t pretend to understand that side of it. But whatever he is, or whatever’s been wandering around, it hasn’t been threatening us. It’s been frightening because it’s – well, spectral. But he never intended any harm to anyone.’

‘The reverse, in fact,’ said Michael. ‘He was looking for Elvira. Trying to keep her away from William because he believed William wanted to silence her – maybe to kill her.’

‘Yes, of course. And Beth said that day that whoever took her didn’t mean any harm – that she wasn’t the one he was looking for. Ellie said something like that as well, didn’t she? And Brooke took Beth to the church, remember – his own church where he was a sidesman and on that prison reform committee.’

‘He took those other girls there, as well,’ said Michael, remembering. ‘That one in the nineteen sixties. And there was a mention of one in the thirties, too.’

‘He thought he was putting them in a safe place – somewhere William couldn’t hurt them.’

‘Yes. And d’you remember Harriet’s account of someone tracing her features that day at Charect? It’s what a blind person would do – trying to identify someone by touch. But,’ said Michael, ‘he was already too late to save Elvira. William got to her in Brank Asylum. Don’t cry, Nell, darling.’

‘That poor child, Elvira,’ said Nell, shakily. ‘I keep seeing her with Beth’s face. She must have thought William was the one person in the world she could trust – the one person she had left to cling to after her mother died.’

‘I know.’ He held her to him for a moment.

‘Sorry,’ said Nell, presently. She sat up and reached for the remains of the wine. ‘Elvira thought it was Brooke she had to be frightened of,’ she said. ‘She saw him that day in the garden – when the apple tree was being replanted. She had seen him in the house the night her mother died, as well.’

‘And so she allotted it all to Brooke,’ said Michael, thoughtfully.

‘Yes. D’you know,’ said Nell thoughtfully, ‘at the start I didn’t much like the sound of Brooke Crutchley – I still don’t like that clock he made, and I definitely don’t like all that brooding over books on magic, or that grisly night in the burial yard at Shrewsbury Gaol. But I’ve got to say, I feel rather sorry for him. I do think he was a bit unbalanced by Elizabeth.’

‘I wish I could have seen Elizabeth for myself,’ said Michael speculatively, and he grinned at her. ‘I’ll bet she was quite a girl.’

‘You wouldn’t have liked her one bit,’ said Nell firmly, and he laughed.

‘I like what I’ve found here,’ he said and pulled her to him.

‘Michael,’ said Nell, an appreciable time later, ‘do you realize it’s well after midnight? Will you be locked out of the Black Boar?’

‘Probably not, but I think I should go,’ he said. ‘I won’t assume that I can stay the night here, Nell, in case you were wondering about that.’

‘Well—’

He took her hands. ‘There are going to be some nights though, aren’t there?’ he said. ‘When I don’t have to leave?’

‘Oh, I hope so,’ said Nell eagerly. As he got up to go, she said, ‘Michael – Brooke’s body. What will happen?’

‘I should think the police will carry out some forensic tests,’ said Michael, ‘but they’ll probably start with the assumption that it’s Brooke. There was that presumption of death notice, wasn’t there?’

‘There’d be a proper funeral?’ said Nell.

‘I imagine so. Were you thinking that might lay the old boy’s spirit to rest or something?’

‘I suppose I was. Don’t laugh at me, I know I’m being romantic and clinging to the old traditions of all good ghost stories.’

‘I wasn’t laughing,’ said Michael, coming back to kiss her. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, my love. I’ve said it again, haven’t I? “My love”. It does sound good, doesn’t it?’

‘Better each time you say it.’

‘I think so as well.’ As they went down the stairs and through the shop to the street door, he said suddenly, ‘There’s another thing I think should be explored before we can regard all this as over. And I think it should be done before Jack and Liz get here.’

‘What?’

‘The attic at Charect House.’

Michael was pleased to find, when he reached his room at the Black Boar, that a phone message had been put under his door. It had been carefully written out by the receptionist.

‘Dr Flint – phone message from Dr Jack Harper in Paris. Apologies for not being in touch – his cellphone was stolen at Charles de Gaulle airport. He will get another one when he reaches London tomorrow so he can use a UK network while he’s here. Will contact you then.’

So Jack’s long silence was explained as easily and as ordinarily as that. Michael was immensely relieved – he had been visualizing all manner of things happening to Ellie. But it looked as if they could come to Marston Lacy for Christmas as planned, and Ellie would be perfectly all right. As he got ready for bed, he was smiling at the prospect of introducing Nell to Jack and Liz, and of seeing Beth and Ellie together.

It had been difficult to get the builder to come out to Charect House again so near to Christmas, but Inspector Brent had added his persuasions to those of Michael and Nell, and a lorry and a couple of men had finally trundled along Blackberry Lane.

Charect House was silent and still. There’s nothing here now, thought Michael, standing in the hall with the scents of new timbers and paint around him. Whatever was here – some lingering fragment of that strange, unhappy man who loved Elizabeth Lee beyond sanity, and who saw her die that night – it’s gone.

The builder went up to the attics, admiring the renovations along the way.

‘Nice piece of oak for that banister,’ he said. ‘And that coving on the landing – you wouldn’t believe the problems we had putting that up. High ceilings in these old houses, see.’

He stood in the attic, which had been opened up for Ellie’s playroom and which was due to be papered with bright wallpaper chosen by Liz, and looked disapproving.

‘Crying shame to disturb all this,’ he said. ‘Still, if it’s police orders.’ He tapped the wall and nodded. ‘Be a breeze to break that down. I’ll get the sledgehammer.’

As he clattered down the uncarpeted stairs, Michael stood for a moment in the attic room with the views towards the smudgy Welsh mountains. Ellie would love this room – it would be her hideaway, and she would make up so many stories about the people who had lived here. But let them be happy stories, thought Michael. Because this house must have had happy times. He looked back at the wall that the builders were going to demolish and hoped he was doing the right thing. But I think you’re still here, Harriet, he said in his mind. I think you’ve been part of whatever’s lingered here.

The builder and his assistant came noisily back up the stairs, and Michael stood back as the sledgehammer swung through the air. It landed squarely on the centre of the wall, and this time it gave way almost immediately. Huge sections of old, dry plaster fell away, and there were several confused moments when the entire attic was a mass of whirling dust. Fragments of plaster and shards of brick seemed to go on and on cascading down, catching at Michael’s throat, making him cough and stinging his eyes.

Then, little by little, the dust cleared and began to settle, and it was possible to make out what was beyond the huge, jagged hole. Huddled against the inside of the wall was something that might, at first glance, be household debris. But as the dust cleared—

‘Jesus Christ,’ said the builder. ‘Oh, Christ Al-bloody-mighty, it’s a sodding body.’ He turned to Michael, his face, beneath the plaster dust, patchily red and white with shock. ‘A corpse,’ he said, his lips flabbering over the word.

‘Yes.’

Michael had hoped very strenuously that she would not be here – that he would be able to think of her escaping, returning to Cheshire, perhaps becoming involved in some interesting, useful war work. Even that she might have met someone to replace her beloved Harry.

He brought his mind back to the builder who, white-faced, was asking if the police should be called. ‘Will I go down to phone them?’

‘I think you’d better. Ask for Inspector Brent, if possible. But tell him there’s no frantic rush.’

‘You don’t mind staying up here with – with that?’

‘Not in the least,’ said Michael, and he turned back to the jagged hole and to what lay just inside it.

Harriet Anstey’s bones were small and fragile, and Michael found them unbearably sad. The hands were stretched upwards as if the last act might have been to bang vainly on the wall for help. Clinging to those hands were shreds of what might once have been striped cotton.

‘Oh, Harriet,’ said Michael softly. ‘I’m so sorry no one found you.’