Spider Light (28 page)

‘What in God’s name…?’

‘No idea,’ said Godfrey. ‘But it’s inside the house.’

‘It’s inside the music room,’ said Oliver.

They crossed the hall, rather erratically switching on lights as they went. The door of the music room was flung open, and Antonia Weston, her face sheet white, the pupils of her eyes shrunk to pinpoints with terror, came running out to meet them.

She half fell into Oliver’s arms, and she was shaking so badly that for a moment she could not speak.

Then she managed to say, ‘Could you get the police at once–and an ambulance. Oh God, yes, you’d better get an ambulance as well, because he’s certainly dead, but we’d better be absolutely sure.’

‘Who’s dead? Antonia, tell me who’s dead?’ said Oliver. And then, ‘Godfrey get some brandy.’

With a superhuman effort, Antonia managed to stop shaking, and discovered she was clutching Oliver as if he was a liferaft. She stepped back, and said, ‘It’s Greg Foster. Somebody’s stabbed
him–he’s in the music room–I’m perfectly all right, but I will have that brandy, if you don’t mind.’

Detective Inspector Curran was a tall thin gentleman with alert eyes and close-cropped, grey hair. The stolid Sergeant Blackburn was in attendance. Antonia, who had hoped not to have to deal with the sergeant again, retreated into a deep armchair in the corner of Oliver Remus’s sitting room.

Even two floors up, it was possible to hear sounds of activity downstairs, and it was impossible not to be jolted back to the sick confusion of Richard’s and Don Robards’ death. Scene-of-crime officers, thought Antonia. People in disposable paper suits scraping at the carpet and the skirting boards, and sealing the grisly harvestings in minuscule sterile phials. The flashing of police cameras on the body. Richard’s and Don’s bodies had not been moved for what had felt like hours, while the forensic experts assessed how and when they had fallen, at what angle the knife had gone in, the trajectory of the blood…

Greg Foster had been moved, though. They had heard a heavy engined police ambulance drive up a little while ago. There had been the sounds of shuffling feet and solemn voices, then the slamming of car doors. Antonia had known they were taking the body away. (And the
Caprice
music? Had they taken that?)

Godfrey Toy was perched worriedly on the edge of a chair. After he had called the police and an ambulance, he had been given a large brandy by Oliver, but he had been shaking so badly he had spilled half of it. Antonia was not shaking, but it was only by dint of extreme concentration that she was not.

By contrast, the professor, standing by the mantelpiece, appeared to be as cool as a cat and about as uncaring. As if to emphasize this, Raffles wandered into the room in the wake of the two police officers, and sat by the fire, looking like a bored Egyptian cat-god.

D. I. Curran courteously asked Antonia to explain precisely what had happened tonight, from around six o’clock up to the
time she had found Greg Foster’s body. In her own words, if she would be so good. Sergeant Blackburn would make notes, and they would prepare a statement for her to sign.

Antonia had to grip her hands very tightly together in case they began to shake again. Even to her own ears the account of tonight’s incident sounded like the wildest flight of fantasy. When she reached the part about following the prowler through the park and finding the body, she broke off to say defensively, ‘I do know how ridiculous this must seem, but truly inspector, I’ve been the victim of several macabre tricks since I came to Amberwood.’

‘We meet stranger things in our working day, Miss Weston. Is it Miss, by the way?’

‘I believe it’s Doctor if you want to be precise,’ said a voice from the fireplace. Antonia felt as if someone had picked her up and dropped her into a pit filled with ice-cold water. ‘I don’t see why Doctor Weston shouldn’t be given that courtesy, at least, do you?’ said Oliver, looking at the inspector. ‘I expect she worked extremely hard to acquire it.’

Antonia supposed that as nightmares went, this was about as bad as it could get. She stared miserably at the floor, but was still aware of Sergeant Blackburn impassively making a note. She thought Godfrey Toy turned to stare at her. She wondered if Oliver Remus was watching her with that cool dispassionate regard, so to counteract this, she said angrily, ‘You’d better all stay with Miss. I’m not entitled to the Doctor part any longer.’

Curran studied her thoughtfully, and then said, ‘Presumably you’re going back to Charity Cottage tonight?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘In that case, I’ll walk across the park with you. Blackburn, see if they’re still searching the grounds, will you? And check whether they’ve nearly finished downstairs while you’re about it. Dr Toy–Professor Remus–stay here for the moment, will you?’

‘Do we have a choice about that?’ said Oliver.

‘No, but you asked me to be courteous. I’m doing my best.’

‘Are you?’

‘I’ll be back shortly,’ said Curran, ignoring the sarcasm in the professor’s voice. ‘Miss Weston, shall we go?’

After they had gone, Godfrey demanded of Oliver what on earth that had been about.

‘You mean why was I rude to D. I. Curran?’

‘I don’t care if you insult the whole of Cheshire,’ said Godfrey, who would have been torn apart before he would have committed any kind of discourtesy himself. ‘I mean Antonia Weston.
Is
she a doctor?’

‘She was,’ said Oliver, refilling his brandy glass. ‘But she was struck off. Did you really not recognize her?’

‘I really did not. Will you stop being so melodramatic and mysterious, and tell me what’s going on.’

‘I can’t recall the details,’ said Oliver. ‘But I’m fairly sure Antonia Weston was convicted of murdering one of her patients.’

‘How? An overdose or something?’

‘No. She was a psychiatrist and there was a young man she was treating. He killed her brother, and she went for him with a knife or something like that. I told you, I don’t remember it all. I think there was a plea for self-defence and mitigating circumstances, but they still found her guilty.’

‘She was sent to gaol?’

‘Yes, I’m sure she was. The boy was her patient–that was what really damned her.’

Godfrey, still trying to absorb this bombshell, asked how long ago this had all taken place.

‘About five years.’ Oliver said it in a remote voice, and nothing in his tone so much as hinted that anything that had happened in that year was memorable because of Amy’s death. He said, ‘And if I was rude to the inspector, it was because I didn’t like some of the questions he was asking her.’

‘If there’s a murderer on the loose they’re bound to question everyone.’

‘Certainly they are. With particular attention to lone females who take holiday cottages in the middle of nowhere in November. But too many policemen suffer from extreme tunnel vision. They go hotfoot for the likeliest prime suspect.’

‘You think Antonia Weston would be their prime suspect?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘But look here, she wouldn’t kill Greg Foster,’ said Godfrey. He was so incensed he very nearly forgot about feeling ill at the memory of that poor young man’s body sprawled on the music-room floor. ‘She hardly knew him.’

‘I don’t think she killed him. But you can see why Curran might?’

‘Yes,’ said Godfrey unhappily. ‘Yes, I can.’

It was hard to believe Oliver’s story, but Godfrey knew he would not have made up such a tale. Antonia had been convicted of murdering a young man who had killed her brother, and had been sent to prison. Prison. Locked doors, barred windows and exercise yards.

Godfrey, hunting out his best silk pyjamas to wear tonight in case there was some new crisis that hauled them all out of bed, could not stop thinking about Antonia. He kept seeing the sudden smile that lit up her eyes, and remembered her quick bright intelligence and sensitive hands and voice. He found it impossible to believe she had actually killed someone. Doctors did not kill people–at least not intentionally.

But Godfrey knew it was not the possibility that Antonia really had committed a murder that would keep him awake tonight. It was the nightmare images about how life might have been for her in prison.

‘Sleep as well as you can, Miss Weston,’ said Inspector Curran standing outside the cottage. ‘I’ll just come inside with you to take a look around if that’s all right.’

He made a quick tour of the house, going into each room.
Antonia, standing at the foot of the stairs, heard him opening the wardrobes, and she thought he drew back all the curtains.

He came down the stairs and smiled at her. ‘All serene,’ he said. ‘We’ll be around for a few hours yet.’

‘Then you do believe what I’ve told you?’ said Antonia. ‘About someone getting in? And the music and the hanging rope and all the rest of it?’

‘I don’t precisely disbelieve you,’ he said slowly. ‘Not yet, at any rate.’ He paused, and then said, ‘It was obvious that finding that boy’s body gave you a massive shock.’

‘Yes. The music was–it was the music my brother was playing when he died. The music was next to his body. And the method was the same…the stabbing…’ She sent him a covert look, unsure how much he knew about her.

But Curran merely said, ‘You’ve got a phone, have you?’

‘A mobile.’

‘I’d better have the number. Has anyone else got it?’

‘Only my ex-boss. That’s Dr Saxon–I gave him as a sort of reference to your sergeant.’

‘So you did.’ He wrote the mobile number in a pocketbook, and then scribbled another number, and gave it to her on a torn-off page. ‘That’s my direct number. Just in case you need it tonight.’

‘To confess or to call for help?’ said Antonia angrily.

‘You never know. Make sure to lock all the doors after I’ve gone, won’t you.’

‘That won’t do much good if he’s got a key, which clearly he has.’

‘We’ll be within call for most of the night,’ said Curran noncommittally. ‘Shall you be able to sleep? Have you got any pills you could take?’

‘No.’

‘The police surgeon’s still around somewhere. I could ask him for a sedative.’

‘Thanks,’ said Antonia. ‘But if the prowler does come back…’

‘Revisiting the scene of the crime, were you thinking? That’s very unlikely–tonight at any rate.’

‘I suppose you’re thinking I should know that anyway?’

‘Because you’re a psychiatrist, or because you’ve been convicted of murder?’

Antonia was glad he had stopped avoiding the issue. She said, ‘Either of those things, Inspector. Or maybe both of them.’

‘I’m just being concerned for you, Dr Weston. Is there anyone you could call to come up to stay with you?’

‘A friend’s coming up tomorrow as a matter of fact.’

‘Good. But for tonight, won’t you take even a couple of paracetamol?’

‘No, I won’t,’ said Antonia again. ‘If this sewer rat comes back I don’t want to be too zonked by pills to deal with him.’

George Lincoln had not taken laudanum to help him sleep for years–not, in fact, since Maud’s mother had died. He did not like doing so, but since the dreadful night when he had decided to put Maud into Latchkill he had used it several times. It made him feel dull and frowsty the next morning, but it was the only way to avoid lying awake thinking of Maud in that bleak little room with the narrow bed and the squalid, lidded-bucket contraption in one corner.

He had visited her, of course, but he had not dared visit too often, in case people wondered why he was spending so much time at Latchkill visiting a young lady. George could easily imagine them sniggering behind their hands, speculating as to whether the lady in question could be an illegitimate daughter or a mistress. One would be as bad as the other, but neither would be as bad as people knowing that Maud was inside Latchkill to keep her out of the law’s reach in case she had murdered Thomasina Forrester.

He was a little concerned about this question of Maud’s room, though, and he had a word about that with Matron Prout. Maud had told him she did not spend her days in the room with the flowered bed-cover and the nice chairs, he said. What had she
meant? He hoped his instructions had been clear; Maud was to have every comfort possible while she was in Latchkill. He was paying quite highly for that as Mrs Prout very well knew.

Mrs Prout was reassuring. Of course Maud spent her days in that room, she said, and it was one of their very nicest rooms. She had chosen it herself for the child. Dear goodness, what on earth was being suggested? The truth was that Maud became confused at times–most likely because of the sedation they were giving her. Mr Lincoln must not worry; Freda could promise him that the money he was paying was being properly spent on Maud’s comfort.

George felt a little better after this; he felt he had indicated to the Prout woman that he was not a man to be duped, although it would not hurt to keep watch on things.

But behind all these worries, was the memory of how Maud had crouched in Twygrist’s shadow that night, the dreadful sly look on her face like a mask, whispering about people being buried alive…Saying that fingerbones made good hammers–and saying it in such an ordinary conversational tone that George’s skin prickled to remember it. Maud had stared at Twygrist, in exactly the same way her mother used to stare at Latchkill. Louisa had hated and feared Latchkill, but she had been unable to resist going back to it, over and over again.

‘Because once you have seen what crouches inside the spider light, you can never afterwards forget…’

George had always tried to tell himself that Louisa had been entirely normal in the early years. He held on to the conviction that there had been ordinary, happy times. The birth of Maud had been as normal as anyone could wish, and George had loved Maud from the very first; he had thought he would do anything for this dear exquisite child. But hadn’t Louisa been a little–well, a little odd, even then? What about those afternoon walks? Nothing should be more normal than a mother taking her small daughter for an afternoon walk, but Louisa had always taken Maud to Latchkill, and Maud had been frightened.

‘I don’t like that place,’ she once said. ‘We have to look through horrid black gates–for hours and hours we have to do that. And mamma looks all funny, and she talks about spider light and how things hide inside it.’

George had attempted to reassure Maud; he said there was nothing in the world she need be frightened of, and there was no such thing as spider light, it was only one of mamma’s stories. (Is it, though? his mind had said. Because you know, perfectly well, what once happened in the spider light, all those years ago…)

He had tried to put a stop to the walks. Why not go in a different direction? he had said–but he suspected Louisa continued to walk along Scraptoft Lane to Latchkill. It had only been later–when Maud was growing up–that Louisa had stopped going out altogether, staying in her room with the curtains closed. It was safer like that, she had said; the curtains kept the spider light at bay. George had not known how to coax her outside.

If he had known it would turn out like that, would he have married Louisa all those years ago? But he thought he would, because Louisa had been a way of achieving a dream he had always cherished–a dream that centred on his living in a big house with servants and large grounds. In the dream people referred to him as Mr Lincoln of Something-or-Other House, and treated him with that particular respect you saw given to the rich and the aristocrat. Pipe dreams he had thought them in those days; castles in the air. Or were they? Mr Forrester was pleased with his work at Twygrist, and if George continued to prove himself and work hard, who knew what might lie ahead? Mr Lincoln of Something-House. It might happen.

Most of it had happened, and considerably sooner than he could have expected. He had become Mr Lincoln of Toft House (Toft House, that beautiful mellow red-brick house he had always admired so much!), known and respected. And when old man Rosen died, there had been the Rosen money as well. He had got almost everything he wanted, but he also got Louisa, and it
could not be denied that at the end, Louisa, poor soul, had unquestionably been mad.

George managed to hush up Louisa’s dreadful death, as much for Maud’s sake as for all the other reasons, but when he looked back over the last eighteen years, it seemed to him almost everything he had done and every decision he had made had been for Maud’s sake. Everything–all the way back to that night in Twygrist…

He had been walking home from a church meeting in Amberwood Magna–his uncle had been vicar at St Michael’s for several years, and encouraged the young George to be part of the various church activities. George had gone to the meeting in his uncle’s place because his uncle had been unwell.

It was late October, and just starting to grow dark–that time of the day which was not quite evening but which was no longer really day. George walked part of the way home with several people who had been at the meeting–it was barely two miles, and he thought he would enjoy the exercise. He bade farewell to the others at the crossroads on Amberwood’s outskirts and prepared to walk the rest of the way by himself.

This last part of the journey took him along what he thought of as the Twygrist Road. The mill stood by itself, fringed by trees and surrounded by pasturelands, with the reservoir a little way up the hillside behind it. George had a deep affection for the mill. He liked his work, and loved the way the place hummed with life when the farmers came to have their corn ground. He enjoyed overseeing the raising of the sluice gates, and feeling the mill shiver as the water came rushing down into the culverts and the immense waterwheels clanked into life. People sometimes said it would shake itself to pieces one day, old Twygrist, but George knew it would not; it was rooted too firmly and too deeply in the ground.

Here was the curve in the road, and a little way ahead was the crouching outline of the mill itself. It was strange to see it like
this, silent and wreathed in the thickening shadows, its doors shut against the world.

Except that Twygrist’s doors were not shut against the world at all. They were standing open.

George slowed his footsteps, and then stopped, uncertain whether he needed to do anything about this. It might be that Mr Josiah was in there, attending to some unexpected task, although there were no lights showing anywhere. The door’s lock was not a very strong one–Mr Josiah was always intending to have it replaced, but no one was very likely to break into the place because there was nothing that could be removed. But it was unusual to see the door standing open like this, and George thought he had better look inside to make sure nothing was wrong. At least he could close the door to stop animals getting in.

He reached the threshhold, but then paused; it was rather forbiddingly dark inside, and perhaps after all this was not such a good idea. It was then that the sounds reached him, and he glanced uneasily over his shoulder. The wind in the trees, was it? But there was hardly any wind, and whatever he was hearing came from inside the mill itself. He waited, and presently it came again: a thin keening sound, it was, rising and falling, as if the bones of the mill were moaning in pain. George felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. There had always been rumours about Twygrist, just as there were rumours about any really old building. In Twygrist’s case they hinted that the women who came to sort and husk the corn–most of them local farmers’ wives or daughters–dabbled in witchcraft. It was absurd, but understandable: the women always wore black because of the constant dust, and were not allowed lighted candles or oil lamps in the husking room. It could not be denied that as they sat bent over their work, at the long wooden table, they had the uncanny look of a group of witches mumbling and mowing over incantations.

Supposing the sounds he could hear were something to do with that–supposing those women really were witches? That was
ridiculous! It was an animal–an injured animal. Holding resolutely onto this notion, George went inside. As he walked across the wooden floor, the old joists creaked under his weight, and something moved in one of the corners near to the bottom of the wheels–something that had been huddled into the darkness, and something that was too large to be an animal.

George did not quite cry out, but his heart came up into his throat. Then the darkness shifted, and he saw the shape was human and female: a youngish girl with fair fluffy hair. Relief washed over him, and he was able to say, ‘Who is it? Is something wrong?’

At first she shrank back into the shadows, both hands thrust out as if to ward off an attack, but George had already recognized her. Miss Rosen, Louisa Rosen, from Toft House–the mellow old house that had formed part of that wild pipe dream.

He said again, ‘Is something wrong? It’s Miss Rosen, isn’t it? You know me, surely? George Lincoln from the rectory.’

Now he was nearer he saw her face was streaked and swollen with tears, and her gown was ripped. He was not very used to young ladies, but he took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders, then knelt down on the wooden floor and took one of the small hands, trying to warm it between his own. He asked if she was ill. He was not sure what family she had, so he just asked if he should go along to Toft House and fetch someone for her.

‘No!’ cried Miss Rosen. ‘No, you mustn’t do that. I shall be all right presently. There’s only my grandfather, and he mustn’t be distressed. He has a–something wrong with his heart.’

George said, ‘You came to live at Toft House last year, I think?’ At least she had stopped crying.

‘Yes. My grandfather wanted new surroundings after my parents died in a carriage accident. We like Amberwood. But he mustn’t know what’s happened to me–he hasn’t got over my mother’s death. And if he found out about the man this afternoon—’

‘What man? Miss Rosen, has someone hurt you?’

‘He was from–that place,’ said Louisa, shuddering and starting to cry again.

‘What place?’

‘You know. The asylum.’

‘Latchkill?’ said George in surprise, and another shudder went through her. But he persisted. ‘D’you mean someone who works there or a–a patient?’

‘A patient. One of the mad people.’

George did not know a great deal about Latchkill’s occupants, but he knew, as everyone in the area knew, that the asylum’s gates were kept firmly locked and bolted at all times, and that patients were not permitted to roam around unchecked.

So he said, ‘But you can’t have been attacked by one of the patients, not unless you were actually inside Latchkill’s grounds, that is. Were you visiting someone, or—No, I’m sorry, of course you weren’t. Please don’t start crying again, I’m sure it’s not good for you.’

But more of the story tumbled out, as if Louisa wanted to get rid of the words as quickly as possible.

She had, it seemed, been intending to pick wildflowers to press and use for making birthday cards to send to friends throughout the year; it was something she had done ever since she was a child, she said, and George nodded, and thought it a very nice, very lady-like occupation. He imagined Louisa bent over a table, the flowers and the tissue paper scattered around, her fair curls tumbling free of a ribbon.

But, said Louisa, she had stayed out longer than she had intended and had not noticed how dark it was getting. Mr Lincoln would know that early autumn twilight that seemed to creep in from nowhere and catch one unawares? Quite frightening it could be.

‘So I was going to walk very quickly past Latchkill, and go home along Scraptoft Lane.’

She had been almost level with Latchkill’s gates, walking along the grassy bank that fringed the road.

‘I didn’t much like it, but I thought I’d soon be past the gates, and I was going to be firm about not looking in through them. Only then, a–a figure stepped out from behind a tree, and barred my way.’ The tears began to flow again. ‘I ran off at once, but he came after me–I could hear him running along behind me–like a giant pounding on the ground. And I didn’t really look where I was going–I just wanted to get away–or hide somewhere safe…That was when I saw the mill, and I thought I might be able to hide there. The door was locked, but it was only a thin sort of lock, and when I pushed hard it snapped off. I didn’t think Mr Forrester would mind, and I thought I could explain to him–I do know him; we’ve been to luncheon at Quire House, and for sherry after church on Sunday.’

George knew a ridiculous stab of envy at the casual way she said this, as if it was an ordinary thing to do. But for her, it would be an ordinary thing. Louisa and her grandfather would be invited to Quire House as guests, as a matter of course–they were neighbours, equals. It would not occur to old Josiah to invite an employee, a hireling, and it ought not to occur to the hireling, either. But one day, thought George,
one day
…

‘I didn’t think the man would follow me in here,’ said Louisa, ‘but he did. So I tried to hide over there’–she indicated the huge silent waterwheel–‘and I huddled right down behind it, and it smelt horrid–there’s some water in the bottom of the tank-thing. I prayed he wouldn’t find me–I prayed so hard, Mr Lincoln.’