Spider Light (12 page)

‘The jemmy principle, sir?’

‘Exactly. See if you can break off any sections of the old machinery to use as levers–anything that looks strong enough and thin enough.’

The cellars seemed to Donna to be filling up with panic, and the smooth-as-eggs doors began to take on a dreadfully sinister appearance. Airtight.
Airtight…
The clock was still beating out its rhythm, but the words of the rhythm had changed.
Airtight…airtight…

The inspector’s voice cut through this horrid tattoo. ‘One of you had better go back upstairs and radio Area to ask about the availability of oxyacetylene cutters in case—Oh, wait though, it looks as if you’ve got some purchase on it at last. Don’t let it slip back!’

The door did not slip back. Its old hinges screeched like a thousand souls in torment, and the metal scraped protestingly against the rough and ready levers the men had inserted, but Donna saw it begin to swing outwards. Dry stale air gusted out, and something that had been huddled against the other side of the door fell forward.

‘Oh, God,’ said Donna, no longer bothering to remain hidden. She clapped both hands over her mouth as if to force back a scream or a sob. ‘Oh,
God
…’

They were both there. They must have been there all along–all the time. Four days. And the room had been airtight…

Maria Robards had fallen onto her back, and the glare of the torches showed up her terrible face. The skin she had taken such care of–beauty treatments at expensive salons, her insistence on buying the best make-up obtainable–was suffused with purple where the veins had swollen in her frenzied efforts to escape and the panic-filled struggle for air. Her eyes were wide open–bulging from their sockets–and the whites were stained crimson where the tiny capillaries had haemorrhaged.

She had taken care of her hands as well. Scented hand lotions, manicures, always wearing costly rings. The rings were still there, but the once-perfect nails were broken and the fingertips were crusted with blood where she had clawed at the heavy steel doors.

Donna’s father was not by the door; he was lying near the brick chimney. His face was turned away from the torchlight, but it was possible to see that his hands were also bruised and bloodied. Perhaps he had been trying to find a chink in Twygrist’s structure: a tiny tear in the fabric which could be widened to let in air. Perhaps he had not known where he was, though, and had been beating uselessly against the bricks, in the mad, dying belief that they were doors that could be forced open.

In a high strained voice, Donna said, ‘They’re both dead, aren’t they?’ and in the small enclosed space, her voice seemed to bounce back at her, mingling with the steady beating of the old clock.

There was the sound of the inspector’s voice, kindly and concerned. ‘Yes, my dear. I’m afraid they’re both dead.’

Both-dead…Both-dead…
The clock snatched at that.
Tick-tick, both-dead, tick-tick, twice-dead…

Twygrist’s darkness reared up and wrapped itself round Donna in a dizzy, sick-making vortex. She pitched forward into this swirling dizziness and the inspector caught her as she fell.

It hurt Thomasina very much to put Maud in the room on Quire’s second floor, but if she was to get a child–a boy who would be a worthier heir for Quire than Simon–there was no alternative. And after all, the room was not some grim stone-floored, iron-barred cell like something in Newgate; in the precentor’s time it had been a nursery–inside it an inner door opened onto a night-nursery. Admittedly there were bars at all the windows–they had been put there to stop the precentor’s sons from toppling out while fighting one another–but they were quite thin bars and there were only a couple of them across each window. As well as that, the two rooms were conveniently far away from the main part of the house, and there was a lock on the outer door.

A story would have to be thought up for the servants, of course. Thomasina might say Maud had succumbed to some infectious disease–no, that would bring Daniel Glass to Quire. She would simply say that Maud had influenza, and she wanted to nurse the child herself. In a few days’ time Maud might be more biddable and Thomasina and Simon could decide on their next move.

Thomasina had found the threesome love-making rather piquantly exciting, but that had mostly been because she liked
knowing she was controlling Simon and forcing him on. Other than that, Simon’s part in the business had turned out to be as gruntishly repellant as Thomasina had always suspected and rather messy at the end. If that was the famous act that had inspired all those miles of lyrical poetry and acres of ballads, and for which people toppled thrones and waged wars, well, as far as Thomasina was concerned, they could keep it and welcome. She would stay with her velvet-skinned, silken-haired girls.

It was a pity Maud had reacted so violently. Running away and hiding in that wash-house–there had been no need for such melodramatic behaviour, but Thomasina was not going to abandon her wonderful scheme because of an hysterical tantrum. The idea of a child–a son–whom she would adopt and who would be almost her own had taken firm hold of her mind.

Maud and Simon would have to be married, of course. Maud’s boy–who would really be Thomasina’s boy in all other respects–must not bear the stigma of bastardy, and it ought to be easy enough to put round the story of a whirlwind romance. Maud’s father was certainly not likely to object to his daughter’s marriage into the wealthy Forrester family: Thomasina was well aware of George Lincoln’s pretensions and she knew he would welcome Simon as a son-in-law with open arms and no questions asked. He would be delighted to think Maud’s boy–George’s own grandson–would be heir to Quire Park. As for Simon himself, if he wanted his debts paying and the £3,000 Thomasina had promised him, he would have to do a bit more than tup Maud a few times until she conceived. Tup. The hoary old rural expression pleased her. There was no reason why Simon should not see the thing through to its proper conclusion and, to make sure, Thomasina was going to withhold part of the £3,000 until after the marriage ceremony.

The child, when it was born, should be named Josiah for her father. She could see him quite clearly in her mind this small Josiah, and the longer she looked at his image, the more real he became. She could see him at all the stages of his life…toddling
around Quire’s park, loved by all the local people and the tenants. Young Master, they would call him in the villages, knowing he was Miss Thomasina’s nephew by Mr Simon, and Quire’s heir. The women would cluck indulgently over him and marvel at how strong and straight he was growing. And even though he would go away to school, there would be the holidays and he would be at Quire for those.

Maud would have to be allowed a hand in Josiah’s growing-up, of course, and so, presumably, would Simon. But Maud could be manipulated and Simon could be bought, and Thomasina was not very worried about either of them.

She would teach Josiah about Quire and the obligations that owning it brought. When he was older there would be hunting and fishing and all the country things, although she dared say there might be nights when he would sneak off, the young rogue, to go poaching with the likes of Cormac Sullivan. She would turn an indulgent blind eye to that.

Later it might be possible for the family business to be revived, so that Josiah could occupy the place that the first Josiah, had occupied in Amberwood. The more Thomasina thought about this, the better she liked the idea. She might even take a look round Twygrist to see exactly how dilapidated it was, although she would have to steer clear of George Lincoln. For one thing George was too old to resume his work and for another, Thomasina could not risk awkward questions about Maud at this stage of the plan, least of all from Maud’s father.

Maud. As she got back into the big double bed, Thomasina wondered how far she could trust Maud’s state of mind. Tonight’s hysteria would pass, but what about those curious darknesses in Maud’s nature: the macabre sketch Thomasina had found, and the obsession with that gloom-filled music? Might such darknesses indicate a genuinely disturbed mind? More importantly, might such a disturbed mind be hereditary? Thomasina did not want an heir who could have inherited some flaw from his mamma. Quire in the hands of a madman would be as bad as
Quire in the hands of a heavy drinking gambler like Simon, in fact it would be worse.

But she did not think there was much risk. Her involvement with the Forrester Benevolent Trust had given her a nodding acquaintance with the care of the insane, and she had never once heard it suggested that madness was hereditary. If Maud’s mental condition became troublesome, or if she refused to do what Thomasina wanted, then Thomasina would simply resort to opium again.

She smiled, thinking how shocked most of Amberwood would have been to see the correct respectable Miss Forrester striding through London’s sleazier alleys, haggling with the cat-faced child over the purchase of a paper cone of opium. And
how
that impudent creature had haggled!

Thomasina had not really minded though–she had found the girl’s defiant bargaining exciting, and the girl had known it. When the opium had finally been bought, she had said, ‘Coming home with me now, are you, Thomasina? I got a lady to pleasure at five–she likes me to go to her own house, but we got an hour before that. Cost you double, though.’ Thomasina had so hated the thought of the girl going from her narrow bed in Seven Dials to that of some rich soft-living female, that she had offered her not twice, but three times the usual amount not to go. The girl had taken the money, and this time, as well as her lips and her hands, she had used one of the polished leather phalluses on Thomasina, saying three times the payment deserved three times the pleasure. When Thomasina walked down towards St Martin’s Lane, where she could get a hansom to take her to Waterloo, she had looked back and seen the girl leave the house, and had known she was going to that other woman anyway.

She turned away from these thoughts, and began to plan how she could make Maud’s second-floor prison as comfortable and as pleasant as possible.

However comfortable and pleasant the second-floor rooms might be–however many books and painting things were brought up
here–there was still a locked door and there were still bars at the windows: Maud knew she was in a prison.

Every night after dinner Simon and Thomasina came up the stairs and unlocked the door. Maud’s world had shrunk to the sound of their step on the stairs and the turning of the key in the lock. And then, once the lock had been turned, came the slow opening of the door, exactly as the black door in her nightmare used to open, and with it came the crowding terror, because there was something dreadful waiting behind that door…

Once they were in the room–the key firmly turned again in the lock–Thomasina got undressed and Maud had to get undressed as well. Sometimes Thomasina undressed her and once Simon undressed her, which was dreadful. Then there was the stroking and licking with Thomasina that constituted ‘It’, and then Simon got undressed and there was the banging and pumping into her body and the wet stickiness that happened at the very end.

Twice Simon was flushed and slurry-speeched, and the pumping did not hurt as much and Maud was grateful. But both times Thomasina flew into a rage and said Simon was drunk and he had better go away and sleep it off. The second time, the colour suddenly drained from Simon’s face and he lurched off the bed and stumbled across to the washstand to be sick. Thomasina compressed her lips, and carried the bowl away to empty it in the bathroom, and Simon shambled back to his own bed. The following night they both pretended it had not happened.

A cottage piano arrived at the end of the first week and was carried up to the second-floor room, and until she could escape properly Maud escaped into music. She tried out the Chopin and Debussy pieces her father had enjoyed, and some of Beethoven’s compositions, although she had to stop playing the
Pathétique
after the first few bars, because it made her cry to think of Beethoven facing deafness, unable to properly hear this beautiful music.

But the best music of all for escaping was Paganini’s
Caprice
Suite. There was a piano arrangement of this by Schumann, and Maud resolved to master it. Paganini had known about being locked away and accused of madness–there was a story about how he had been accused of murdering his mistress while he was in the grip of insanity. Whether the story was true or not, prison had not killed his spirit: he had turned his mind to honing and polishing his marvellous musical gifts, and he had emerged stronger.

Maud would emerge stronger from all this as well. She would play Paganini’s music, and while she did so she would plan how to be revenged on Thomasina and Simon. Some of the plans she thought of shocked her with their brutality, but after a time she stopped being shocked, because such punishments were no more than those two deserved.

Thomasina was enjoying making plans. Since she had always adhered to the robust maxim of, no sooner the word than the deed, she went along to Twygrist the very next afternoon. Even without the dream of that young Josiah, there was no point in letting the place crumble into decay. She took the keys from her desk, and tucked a candle and matches in the pocket of her skirt, because parts of Twygrist were as dark as hell’s deepest caverns.

As she walked briskly along the lanes, she thought how pleased people would be if the mill were to come alive after so many years. The farmers would bring their corn again, and Twygrist would hum with life and activity. It would be as it had been when Thomasina and Simon had played their games there as children, and been smiled over and doted on by the workers. Young Mr Simon and little Miss Thomasina, the women had said, beaming, and the men had touched their caps politely. Thomasina had loved it.

She and Simon had made up a song about Twygrist to the tune of the old nursery rhyme, ‘The House that Jack Built’, which had been Simon’s favourite. ‘This is the mill that Joe built,’ they had sung–‘Joe’ had been Thomasina’s father, of course.

Twygrist’s door still creaked, and as Thomasina went inside the remembered atmosphere engulfed her: old timbers, because Twygrist was extremely old itself, the scent of machinery and a faint sourness of stagnant water. This last was not good; it was to be hoped that the sluice gates were not leaking and letting water seep in from the reservoir.

Simon had added a ruder verse when they were older, dealing with the fate of the maiden all forlorn, who had given the miller’s assistant the horn, and been laid in the mill that Joe built. Remembering this as she climbed to the upper floors, Thomasina thought it a shame that Simon had not turned his abilities to something worthier than drinking, gambling and womanizing.

The massive machinery looked reasonably sound, although there were ominous patches of rust in places. The millstones were starting to dry out and crack from disuse. Proper workmen would have to be called in to overhaul all that, but Thomasina did not think any of it was beyond repair. She lit one of the candles and, shielding it with her cupped hand, went down the steps to the kiln room.

Had Twygrist always been filled with the little scufflings and scuttlings she could hear? But then really old buildings were never completely silent. As if in response to this, there was what sounded like footsteps overhead and Thomasina was suddenly aware of Twygrist’s lonely situation. She strode back to the foot of the stairs, and called out, ‘Is someone there? Who is it?’

‘Thomasina? It’s me. Simon. I saw you walking along the lane
–I tried to catch you up but you were too quick. What on earth are you doing in here?’

‘Taking a look at the fabric. Checking the sluice gates and so on.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He came down the stone steps and stood at the opening to the tunnels, looking around. ‘Lor, do you remember how we used to come down here as children? I used to tell you ghost stories–you never cared much for them, but they always frightened me half to death, and—’

‘Why did you follow me here? There’s nothing wrong, is there? With Maud?’

‘There’s nothing in the least wrong with Maud, providing you discount the fact that she’s only half a furlong from raving lunacy. You’ll have to do something about her eventually, won’t you? Still, that’s your problem, old girl. My problem is sordid coinage. That’s why I followed you. To talk about it.’

‘Money? I’ve already given you—’

‘A thousand pounds, with the promise of another two if Maud conceives. Yes, I know that.’

‘And I paid your debts,’ said Thomasina dryly. ‘Very substantial debts they were as well.’

‘Oh, a man’s known as much by his debts as by his enemies,’ said Simon, carelessly. ‘I’ve heard Cormac Sullivan say that many a time. But that thousand wasn’t enough, Thomasina. And three thousand isn’t really enough either.’

They looked at one another. ‘You want more,’ said Thomasina at last.