Tower of Silence (33 page)

‘It’s easy to escape from a place like Moy,’ she said. ‘They’re all so stupid in there; I fooled them easily.’ A glint of something artful and pleased with itself showed, and Krzystof felt a fresh jab of fear. She’s clever and cunning and devious, Patrick Irvine had said. And when
she appears sane, that’s when she’s at her most mad and her most dangerous.

‘I went to Teind House first,’ she said. ‘It took me a little while to find it, but in the end I did. It’s signposted from the road, isn’t it? Easy. But when I got there it was empty, and I couldn’t get in because all the doors were locked. So I was going to wait in the outhouse until
she
came home, so that I could kill her. I cut the phone wires while I waited–it’s very easy to do that, did you know? Snip-snip, and it’s done, and the person in the house is completely isolated from the world. I didn’t want Selina to be able to get help, you see. I wanted her to myself. Isolated from the world.’

‘Alone and in the sea of life enisl’d,’ said Krzystof, softly.

‘Yes.
Yes
. That’s poetry, isn’t it? You’d know about poetry, wouldn’t you? Your wife–Joanna–knew as well. She knew about being alone and enisl’d.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘
You
know what I mean,’ said Mary. ‘Of course you do. I didn’t know, not at first, but later on I worked it out.’

And barely understood secrets become woven into childhood nightmares and childhood fears, and sometimes they call the poor mangled ghosts out of their uneasy resting places…

‘I saw you drive up to Teind House,’ she said, ‘and I waited until you unlocked the door and went back to your car. That’s when I went into the house and took the knife from the kitchen drawer. You knew I was there all along, didn’t you? I hid behind the kitchen door and watched
you. I watched you go upstairs, and when you came down again, I followed you here. I took a jacket from the hall stand–I knew I needed to be wearing something dark and anonymous so that no one would see me–and then I crept through the orchard. I followed you all the way, Krzystof, and you didn’t know that, did you?’

But he had known it, of course. He had felt the watching eyes, and he had felt the trickling menace as he went between the trees.

‘Why did you follow me?’ he said. But he knew already. She was simply removing everyone who came between her and Selina March. The thought: then she hasn’t yet got to Selina, formed briefly.

Mary seemed to catch this. ‘I haven’t killed Selina yet,’ she said. ‘I’m still waiting for her. But I’ll have to kill you; you do understand that, don’t you? I knew I’d have to kill you when I realised that you knew someone had got into Teind House. You saw the footprints–I hadn’t thought about leaving footprints. Careless, that. I’m not usually so careless. So I knew I’d have to get rid of you.’ She held up the knife again. ‘This is what I’ll be using. I took it from the kitchen drawer. It’s a good knife, isn’t it? It’s sharp.’

She moved up two more steps as she said this, so that she was almost level with him. Krzystof glanced over his shoulder, to where the stair wound the rest of the way up. Could he make a quick sprint up there? Yes, but to what? said his mind. It’s a one-way street, this tower. It’s just a stairway and a half-landing. Several half-landings, probably. And if you reached the top you’d be trapped
there. He remembered that people in the grip of genuine mania were supposed to possess the strength of at least three. And if she kills me, I’ll never find Joanna, he thought, and there was a renewed jab of bleak and bitter despair, and then a wild surge of anger. I
won’t
let this evil, inhuman creature kill me, he thought. I’ll get away somehow.

‘I didn’t plan on killing you,’ said Mary regretfully. ‘And in some ways it’s a nuisance. But you do see that I can’t let you go free, don’t you? And I’ve been quite clever about it all–I’ve closed the door downstairs so that we shan’t be interrupted. You propped it open, didn’t you, but I closed it when I followed you in. You didn’t hear me do that, did you?’

‘Mary, you need help. Dr Irvine—’

‘Oh, fuck Dr Irvine,’ she said, and Krzystof stared, because just for a moment it was as if a nice, middle-aged lady had used the word. ‘He’s no use at all,’ said Mary. ‘None of them are any use, because none of them understand.’

‘Do you think I might understand?’

‘Oh no,’ she said at once.

‘You could try. We could talk—’

‘No, I couldn’t try and no, we couldn’t talk.’

‘But if you kill Selina and if you kill me, they’ll catch you eventually,’ said Krzystof. ‘And you’ll be—’ He broke off.

‘Punished?’ she said, and incredibly there was amusement now. ‘What else can they do to me that hasn’t already been done? They don’t hang people any longer.
And in this country they don’t give them a lethal injection or send them to the electric chair. In any case I might get away with it. I might be able to get out of Inchcape and find somewhere to live where I won’t be recognised. There are shelters, hostels for homeless, these days, aren’t there? Places where questions aren’t asked. I might even find work and earn some money.’

‘You’d never do it,’ said Krzystof at once. ‘You’ve been away from the world almost all your life.’

For the first time he saw hesitation in her face. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘And I’d forgotten how huge the world is, and how the sky stretches on and on and how it sometimes seems to press down on you when it gets dark—’

She broke off, and Krzystof said cautiously, ‘It’s a huge place, the world, Mary. Frightening. Would you really cope, after all these years?’

‘I coped with getting out of Moy,’ she said, and the hesitation vanished at once. ‘I coped with finding Teind House.’ The mad face suddenly swam nearer. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ she said in the thick treacly whisper. And the hand clutching the knife was suddenly raised, and then brought swooping down.

Krzystof half fell backwards in an attempt to avoid that evilly sharp blade, hitting out with the heavy torch, no longer caring where the blow fell, intent only on defending himself. But the torch flailed uselessly on the air, and she was already half sprawling on top of him. There was a nightmare moment when he felt the feminine crush of breasts against his chest, and the softness of feminine thighs straddling his body–dreadful! Her breath, dry and
slightly sour, gusted into his face, and he turned his head to one side, struggling to bring the torch up once more, because if he could smash it into her cheekbone—He made a grab for her hand, but she snatched it back, and lifted the knife a second time, grinning horridly down at him. A snail-trail of saliva trickled from the corner of her mouth. Disgusting! Revolting beyond bearing! Damn you, thought Krzystof furiously, I
won’t
let you kill me before I’ve found Joanna, I
won’t
—

He was just managing to raise the heavy torch high enough to swing it into Mary’s face when two things happened almost simultaneously.

A car drove past the tower, on the private, little-used road below, its engine snarling through the quiet darkness.

And Mary dug the knife into him.

The pain was instant and intense, but incredibly there was a spiral of surprise. She’s done it! thought Krzystof. The bitch really has stabbed me!

For several nightmare moments his senses were so confused that he could not tell where the pain came from. The torch had rolled out of his hand and into a corner, and the light had gone out. Krzystof was dimly aware of Mary, straightening up, the knife still in her hand–dripping blood? Yes, and it’s your blood, it’s
your blood
—He felt as if he was being sucked down into a dizzying black whirling tunnel–down and down and down–only he dare not let himself reach the bottom of the tunnel because if he did that he would die—

There was the sound of a moan that he did not at first realise was his own, and he managed to claw back up the spinning darkness, and back into the dimly lit stone tower, and it was then that he realised that the knife had gone in not to his body, which presumably she had aimed for, but to the upper part of his thigh. There was a jumble of panic, interspersed with fragments of half-knowledge about severed arteries and tourniquets, and then his senses righted themselves, and he thought that if he could manage to get something–his handkerchief?–tightly enough over the wound at least he would not bleed to death here in the darkness.

His whole leg was a mass of wet, grinding agony, but by dint of exerting every shred of will-power he managed to fold his handkerchief into a thick pad, which he pressed over the wound. He thought the bleeding slowed a little, although it was difficult to tell in the darkness. Could he put on a tourniquet? What could he use for it? He was not wearing a tie, only a sweater with an open-necked shirt under it. Could he use a sock? One for you there, Joanna–‘My dears, there he was, bleeding like a pig the poor darling, and he managed to tie a woolly sock round his leg to stop it.’ Krzystof would happily have given five years of his life if he could have believed that he and Joanna would be sharing the joke of that one in the future.

He had no idea who had driven along the disused road, except that clearly it was not the Fifth Cavalry riding to the rescue, but there had been a swift, nightmare image of Mary going back down the steps, her shadow falling
eerily on the stone walls, the hand that still held the knife raised over her head.

Following her was clearly impossible. Krzystof tried to stand and found he could not. He might have dragged himself across the small landing, but in his present condition the stairs would have taken about a year to negotiate. How about the window? If he could get onto the ledge, he might manage to shout a warning to whoever was below. Everything was still spinning sickeningly around him but he was managing to hang on to consciousness by a thread. He set his teeth, and by half crawling, half dragging himself across the floor, he made it. He was drenched in sweat by this time, and the pain from the stab wound was sheer bloody torture, but he managed to grasp the ledge surrounding the window, and haul himself up until he could see out. The narrow slit was open to the elements, and the cold night air blew into his face, drying the sweat on his face. He drew in several deep lungfuls of it, and felt his head clear slightly.

Leaning forward as far as he dared, he looked down, and there, far below him, was Mary’s figure emerging from the tower. Even from up here, Krzystof could see that she had smoothed her hair back, and turned up the collar of the jacket she wore. She looked a bit dishevelled, but she looked normal. Yes, but her right hand is thrust deep into the jacket pocket, said his mind. She’s still got the knife.

The car was moving slowly, clearly trying to avoid the deep ruts in the road’s surface. Krzystof did not recognise the car, but it was a small one and he thought
there was only the driver inside. He saw Mary pause and look about her, as if unable to get her bearings beyond the tower’s confines, and he remembered that curious moment when she had seemed afraid, and talked about the world’s vastness. And then she ran along behind the car, waving, and the car’s brake lights came on, as if the driver had seen the figure in the mirror. Mary went to the driver’s side, and appeared to speak for a moment. And then, to Krzystof’s horror, she went round to the passenger side and got in.

The car drove away.

Emily did not know the precise moment when the last remnants of the mask fell away from Selina March, and the dreadful mad creature beneath was finally exposed, but she thought it might have been the moment when they actually stepped inside the Round Tower. The place was sufficiently nightmarish on its own account, of course; it did not really need mad people masquerading as prim fifty-something spinsters to add to its atmosphere.

What Emily did know, however, was that by the time Selina grabbed her arm, and said, ‘Don’t go up the stairs–not until we know the men have gone,’ the mask had vanished completely, and the situation had gone beyond all logic or reality.

She tried logic anyhow. ‘Miss March, there are no men. Truly there aren’t. Someone’s escaped from Moy–that’s what the alarm bell was for. So wouldn’t it be much better
to just go back to Teind House and–and lock the doors, and wait until they’ve recaptured whoever it is?’

‘Oh no,’ said Selina at once. ‘Oh no, that’s just what they want us to do. They’ll be waiting outside the tower for us. They’ll be there now–you won’t see them and you won’t hear them, but they’re there for sure.’

So strong was the conviction in her voice that for a moment Emily really did believe that men were hiding outside, waiting to snatch them up.

‘They’re very cunning,’ said Selina softly. ‘That’s what you have to remember. They were so cunning and so sly last time, but I was slyer. I hid inside the tower and I cheated them all.’

The tower…She means that other tower, thought Emily. That dreadful place that Christy talked about. The burial pit, and the poor drying bodies on the shelves–one shelf for men and one for women, and another for children. That’s where she thinks we are. We’ve gone back, thought Emily. We’ve fallen backwards into that long-ago Indian village, with a group of doomed and terrified children trying to escape from terrorists. And it’s no wonder that Christy has been mad all these years, and it’s no wonder that Selina is mad as well. You could surely only feel extreme pity for someone who had been through that kind of childhood trauma.

So she said, in a bright, practical voice, ‘OK, then, what we’ll do, we’ll hide in here for as long as we have to. I’ll stay with you, and we’ll be quite safe.’

‘We mustn’t go up the stair, though,’ said Selina, and the glance she cast towards the winding stone steps sent a
shiver of purest terror down Emily’s spine. ‘That’s where
they
are, you see.’

‘“They”?’ This was sounding like the most way-out dialogue ever written. ‘Miss March, there’s nothing up there except maybe a lot of dust and dirt—’

‘The ogre-birds are there,’ said Selina, and this time Emily heard, as she had heard in Christabel Maskelyne’s voice, the terrified child speaking through the woman. I don’t know how to handle this, she thought in renewed panic. I haven’t a clue about what to do and what not to do.

‘They’re waiting,’ whispered Selina. ‘They’re crouching on the ledge up there, and they’ll pounce. You don’t even have to be dead, you know. My mother wasn’t dead, but they tore her into little pieces. I watched them do it.’

‘Oh, God, that’s terrible—’

‘Yes, it was. It was terrible. So this time we’ve got to outwit them,’ said Selina. ‘The men are outside and the ogre-birds are up there, and we’ve got to outwit them both. We’ve gone back, you see, and if only we’re careful and plan ahead we might escape this time. And then they’ll all be alive in the world again–Douglas and the others, and dear Christy. I’ve missed them so much all these years, you know. We were such wonderful friends, and I loved them so very much,’ she said wistfully, and her voice was suddenly filled with such sadness, and such aching loneliness, that Emily wanted to put her arms round the poor bewildered little creature and tell her that yes, this time they would
escape, and her friends would all be here with her once again.

‘So we’ll go down, not up,’ said Selina, suddenly brisk again.

‘Where—’

‘Didn’t you know about the secret room?’ said Selina, half turning to regard Emily. ‘No, I keep forgetting, you don’t; you wouldn’t know because you’ve never been here before, have you?’ There was the faint childish superiority now–the tone of I-know-something-you-don’t. ‘It’s a good secret,’ she said eagerly. ‘I only found out about it when my Great-uncle Matthew died. He knew a lot about Inchcape and all the old buildings. He wrote a book about it, you know.’

‘I didn’t know.’ At least, thought Emily gratefully, they seemed to be back in the present day.

‘He didn’t put about the secret room in his book, but he mentioned it in his private notes,’ said Selina. ‘I read them all. And one of the things he wrote was that he thought the Round Tower would have had a hidden store-room; a place where the early monks could put their Mass vessels when there was a raid. Chalices and crucifixes and plates, you know.’

‘Buried treasure,’ said Emily, wondering if this would strike a chord with the child-persona that kept coming so macabrely to the surface.

‘Yes, but when I found the room, all the vessels had
long
since gone. It took me a little while to work out exactly where the room was, because those monks were very clever. And they had to face a great many dangers for
their faith, the early Christians. So brave, I always thought them, although my aunts said it was a lot of hysteria. They thought religion was about going to church on Sunday and helping with fund-raising events, and asking the vicar to tea on Sundays.’ As she spoke she was kneeling down and scratching around on the stone floor. Emily watched helplessly, not having the least idea whether the secret room really existed or was just another mad fantasy.

‘When I found the monks’ hideout, I was
so
pleased,’ said Selina. ‘I knew, you see, that there might be a time when I would have to hide again, and I knew that if only I could get it right this time—’

Emily said, gently, ‘Then you would be with your friends again.’

‘Yes.’ It was said gratefully and humbly, and Emily felt the pity of it close around her throat. Then Selina said, eagerly, ‘This is where we have to go,’ and Emily saw that she was pulling up a kind of square trapdoor set into the stone floor, its surface so exactly flush with the stones surrounding it that you would never know it was there. Narrow steps led down into a gaping darkness.

Selina gestured impatiently and Emily thought: well, I dare say this is the maddest thing yet. But she’s not armed and I truly don’t think she means me any harm. I think she’s just sad and lonely, and I think the best thing is for me to go along with what she wants.

She glanced at the trapdoor’s underside as she stepped onto the stone stairs, and was relieved to see a hefty-looking handle sunk into the surface.

‘It’s very easy to get back out,’ said Selina. ‘You just
push the trapdoor up from the centre, using that handle. When it’s closed, you can see a faint line around the edges, so you know where it is.’ And, anticipating Emily’s next thought almost before it had formed, she said, ‘And it won’t be pitch dark down there; there are candles and oil lamps. I brought them ages ago, in case I ever had to hide again. It’s a good thing I did that, isn’t it? Put lights down here?’

‘Yes,’ said Emily, and then, because there seemed to be no reason to resist, she began to descend the steps.

There was a dull scraping sound as Selina pulled the trapdoor back into place over their heads, and as the dim light from above slowly disappeared Emily paused and looked back, panic threatening to engulf her again. I’m shut in with her! No, it’s all right; I can push the trapdoor back up quite easily.

But the dream-quality was returning with every step they took: it was not precisely a nightmare, but it was a curious, out-of-the-world feeling. We’re going down into the bowels of the earth, she thought. Down below an old, old tower where people fought for their religious beliefs and hid from Vikings and Danes, and we’re going underneath a place whose stones have stood here, silent and grim, for a thousand years. She could not see the ghosts, but she could feel them all around her, and she knew that this was a place where the echoes of the past and the echoes of the future lingered, and perhaps even met and melded. And I expect I shall wake up quite soon, she thought, striving for reality. What’s really
happened here is that I fell asleep, and I’m dreaming all this.

Selina must have been down here very recently, and she must have left one of her oil lamps burning, because as they descended Emily could see a gentle glow coming from below. Then she didn’t tell me everything, she thought, with a fresh jab of unease. Unless, of course, the light had been made by someone else who was down here already…

Someone else down here. The stairs ended abruptly, widening into a small dungeon-like room, the floor and walls lined with black stone. Two thick iron pillars were embedded in the floor, and they stretched up into the low stone ceiling; Emily had the unpleasant thought that these iron columns were all that was supporting the immense black weight of the tower overhead. Two oil lamps, standing in opposite corners, cast twin pools of soft light.

The little room was the strangest place she had ever seen. It was furnished neatly and carefully; there was a little low table, polished to a silky sheen, with several silver-framed photographs on it. Emily half recognised the photographs as being of Selina’s parents. A silver bud vase containing a tiny spray of something green and purply stood next to them. Lavender? No, not lavender, rosemary, because rosemary’s for remembrance, and remembrance was what this was about. With the photographs was a powder compact with the initials
EM
engraved on it. How long was it since people had used powder compacts? There was a small scattering of rather
old-fashioned jewellery as well–the kind of pearls that ladies had worn in the Forties–and there was another of the between-glass sheets of newspaper that Emily had seen in Selina’s bedroom. John Mallory March again? Yes, of course it would be.

But Emily gave these things only the most cursory of glances, because set next to the table was a small fireside chair, and seated in it—

‘Hello, Emily,’ said Joanna. ‘Have you come to share my captivity?’

Her hair was dishevelled and there was an ugly bruise on the side of her forehead. She was so pale that for a dreadful moment Emily thought she was one of the ghosts she had sensed earlier, and then she saw the chains circling Joanna’s wrists and the small padlock holding them in place, and she saw that the other end of the chain was looped around the nearer of the iron pillars.

‘You’re a prisoner,’ said Emily, and thought that was probably just about the stupidest thing she could have said. ‘You’ve been down here all along?’

‘Yes,’ said Joanna, her eyes on Selina March. ‘Miss March will explain it to you, I expect.’

‘She’s been kept quite comfortable,’ said Selina at once. ‘Food and drink–every need attended to.’ With bizarre delicacy she indicated a small chair-like structure against the wall, and half lifted the hinged wooden lid of the seat.

‘It’s a very ladylike captivity, you see,’ said Joanna, and although her voice sounded tired and strained Emily saw
the glint of irony that had been such a vivid part of Joanna.

She said, ‘I don’t understand any of this—’

‘I found the shrine,’ said Joanna. ‘That’s what it’s all about. Miss March had made a–a shrine to her parents’ memory, and she kept it down here where it was secret and private. That’s right, isn’t it, Miss March?’

‘It was necessary,’ said Selina. ‘Right from the start it was necessary, because when they died there was no one to pronounce the repentance-prayer over them. The
patet
it’s called in India. So there was nothing to help them take the three steps across the old and holy Bridge into paradise. Humata, Hukhta, and Hvarshta, the three steps are called.’

It sounded like an early Sixties pop song. Three Steps to Heaven. I’m becoming hysterical, thought Emily. Concentrate, you stooge.

‘Until I made the shrine,’ Selina was saying, her eyes glazed and stary again, ‘they used to come into my bedroom every night. They were mutilated, because of the ogre-birds. Half eaten. My mummy was the worst,’ she said, and Emily glanced at Joanna and saw the dreadful comprehending pity in Joanna’s eyes, and knew that Joanna understood.

‘My mummy wasn’t dead when they started to eat her,’ said Selina. ‘But they clawed her eyes out–they like eyes, those bad old ogre-birds. So when she came into my bedroom after she was dead, she had to be brought by my daddy, on account of being blind, you see.’

She paused, and Emily, hardly daring to speak, said, ‘So you made a shrine to their memories.’

‘Yes.’ Selina turned to look at Emily, and incredibly it was the familiar, briskly efficient Miss March again. ‘It kept them away. So I could never risk anyone’s finding it and destroying it. It was found once, a long time ago, and I was made to dismantle it—’ Her face twisted in a second or two of anger, but after a moment she went on. ‘But I hoped it would be all right. I thought that they would be sure to be across the Bridge after several years. You would think they would have been, wouldn’t you?’ This last was directed at Joanna, who said, ‘Yes, you would have thought so.’

‘But they weren’t. The very night the shrine was dismantled they came into my bedroom. The very same night. And it was dreadful. You have no idea how they looked—So I made a vow that no matter what I had to do, I would preserve the shrine for always. And I did. For a long time I kept it out here–in the little room just inside the door–but after my Great-uncle Matthew died I took it back to Teind House. I was there on my own, you see; there was no possibility of anyone’s finding it–of not understanding how vital it was. But then…’ She paused, and then, as if forcing herself to go on, said, ‘There was not enough money. So unpleasant to say it–I was brought up to consider it ill bred to discuss money–but it is the truth. Investments were no longer paying the dividends–I didn’t fully understand that, but I understood when there was not enough money to meet the bills every quarter.’

‘So you started the little paying-guest set-up,’ said Joanna, softly, and Selina turned to her eagerly, as if grateful for this prompt.