Tower of Silence (36 page)

Sixties killer Mary Maskelyne escapes from Moy…Police combing the countryside…Daring break-out foils prison governors
…Yes, it would be a pity to be cheated of those headlines.

The headlines might even say,
Another death to Maskelyne’s credit
…Krzystof Kent. She padded back to the tower, and went in through the old door.

She knew at once that something had happened here. The whole aura of the place had shifted. There was movement–Mary took a moment to pinpoint it, and then knew the movement was not in the tower’s top, but beneath it. She saw then the faint oblong of light in the floor, and, within it, shallow steps leading down into the bowels of the earth.

And the panic was roaring back now, and with it the feeling that the world’s crust might be bursting open after all, and that things might be climbing through—

Because from out of the oblong of light, moving slowly up what looked like narrow stone steps, were two men–Mary saw they were Dr Irvine and Mr Frost from Moy. But she spared them only the briefest of glances, because between them, being helped to walk, was a thin, dishevelled figure, and it could not be, it simply could not—

‘You’re supposed to be dead,’ said Mary, staring. And then, her voice rising to a scream, ‘You’re dead, you
bitch, you bitch-cunt, you cheating cow, you’re dead, I know you’re dead because I killed you—’

She did not see Patrick Irvine dart forward across the stone floor, and she barely felt the hypodermic go into her arm before the real darkness closed down.

They sat in the little cottage on Moy’s outskirts, Joanna and Krzystof, Emily and Patrick, Gillian, and Emily’s father.

Krzystof’s leg had been stitched and bandaged in Moy’s emergency room, but afterwards he had asked to be driven back down to the cottage; Emily thought he had booked himself and Joanna into the Black Boar for what was left of the night, but she understood that for the moment the six of them were clinging together. There was a kind of camaraderie about it; a feeling of not being quite ready to face the rest of the world yet. Emily and Gillian had cooked a huge fry-up for everyone: sausages, bacon, eggs and mushrooms, and Patrick had made coffee.

Krzystof had not said very much since they had carried him down from the Round Tower, and Joanna had not
said very much either. She had bitten her lip when she saw him, as if to stop herself crying, and then had said, ‘Hello, Krzystof darling. What kept you?’ And then she had bent over Krzystof’s supine body on the makeshift stretcher, and there had been a moment when they stayed like that, not speaking, Joanna’s beech-leaf hair falling over Krzystof’s face, his arms round her. Everyone had turned tactfully away, and Emily had felt stupid tears sting her eyes.

Krzystof was seated on the slightly battered window seat, where he could stretch out his injured leg. He was white and a bit dishevelled, but had eaten hugely of the fry-up. Joanna was sitting by him, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. This was a good arrangement because it left the settee and the two armchairs for the others. It was a bit of a squeeze having so many in the little sitting room all at once, but it was not as bad as it might have been, and anyhow Emily did not in the least mind curling up on a cushion on the floor, next to the chimney. Also, she could see Patrick from here. He looked practically transparent with fatigue; there were dark smudges under his eyes, and his hair flopped untidily over his forehead. Emily loved him so much that she could hardly bear it.

They had given their statements to the police, and someone–Emily thought it had been Patrick–had arranged for Selina March’s body to be taken away. There would have to be a post-mortem and an inquest, of course; Emily supposed she would have to give evidence. She also supposed she would start feeling something sooner
or later, although she was not sure whether that would be better or worse than this present frozen state. But when Patrick said, ‘Let me give you a mild sedative, Em–something to help you sleep tonight, at least,’ Emily had instantly said, ‘No, I won’t have anything, thanks.’

Someone–Emily thought it had been her father–had banked up the fire and drawn the curtains against the night. The little room was warm and brightly lit, and the coffee pot was keeping warm in the hearth. The whisky bottle had gone round three times already.

It was Don Frost who said, ‘Patrick–about Mary—’

‘Sedated to the gunnels at the moment,’ said Patrick, looking up. ‘We’ll have to confront the problem in a day or two, of course. But I ought to have realised as soon as she escaped that she was going after Selina.’

‘I ought to have realised who Mary was when she got into the car,’ said Gillian. ‘If I had done—’

‘You couldn’t possibly have known who she was,’ said Don, and Emily, who was liking Gillian and feeling sorry for her because of all the stuff that had come out about her godmother, said, ‘In any case, you didn’t even know that anyone had escaped.’

‘No, that’s true. And it was dark, and she was so plausible about being part of the search party.’

‘She always was plausible,’ said Patrick. He sipped the whisky in his glass, and then said, ‘But I still wish I’d realised sooner that Selina March was the child who escaped in Alwar all those years ago.’

‘Mary’s hate-figure,’ said Joanna, softly.

‘Yes.’ Patrick glanced at Gillian, who said, ‘Selina
never got over what happened in Alwar. She was an odd, difficult creature. I used to try to ginger her up into doing things–having a wider life–but I never managed it. And she would never leave Inchcape, not even for a weekend. I understand that a bit better now.’

‘It was where she felt safe,’ said Emily.

‘Yes.’

‘And yet,’ said Joanna thoughtfully, ‘it was a dreadfully precarious safety, because only a mile or two from her house was a woman who was hell-bent on killing her.’

‘If it comes to blame,’ said Krzystof, ‘I was the one who told Mary that I was staying with a lady who had lived in Alwar as a child. I even said that Selina knew about the Tower of Silence.’

‘Any one of us might have told her that at any given moment,’ said Patrick at once. ‘You can’t possibly be blamed for that. None of us can.’

‘But–it was finding out that Selina was living in Inchcape that tipped Mary back into the mania, wasn’t it?’ said Krzystof.

‘Believe me, Maskelyne never needed tipping,’ said Patrick. ‘The mania never left her.’

For a moment no one spoke, and then Emily said, ‘But when Mary finally got to Selina’s house, she found out that Selina had had a god-daughter, while Mary had had to give up her own child—’

‘Yes, that might well have fuelled the fire.’

‘It did,’ said Gillian, shuddering. ‘I saw it happen, and it was dreadful. But pitiful, as well. Mary went for me, but I managed to dodge out of her way and get back into my
car. She followed me, of course–I saw her in the driving mirror.’

‘That was when she went back to the tower,’ said Don.

‘Yes. And saw us bringing Joanna up from the hidden room.’ Patrick looked across to where Joanna was listening quietly.

Krzystof looked down at Joanna. ‘And that, Joanna,’ he said, ‘is the part that none of us understands.’

‘Well, no.’ Joanna was not looking at any of them.

‘Mary said something to you like, “You’re supposed to be dead,’” said Patrick. ‘She saw you and she just seemed to suddenly–explode.’

Krystof looked down at Joanna’s bent head. ‘Well? Who did she think you were?’

Joanna hesitated, and Krzystof said, ‘You might as well tell us, my love. It’s a night for telling things.’

Joanna made a oh-what-the-hell gesture, and said, ‘I’m supposed, in certain lights, to look like a sister I once had. A sister who was much older than me.’

Patrick and Don Frost turned to stare at her, and Patrick said, in a questioning voice, ‘A sister who died nearly thirty years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ingrid,’ said Patrick, softly. ‘Dear God, of course. Ingrid.’

‘We couldn’t have guessed it,’ said Patrick, at last. ‘And yet the clues were all there.’ He looked at Joanna. ‘It’s why you came here–to Inchcape and Moy, isn’t it? You could
have gone anywhere for your research, but you chose to come here.’

‘I wanted to see her,’ said Joanna. She was leaning forward, her arms curled around her bent knees, staring into the depths of the fire. ‘I wanted to see the woman who killed Ingrid.’ She glanced round the room. ‘The murder happened before I was born, but the–the shock-waves of it went on for years and years. It was as if I was born into those shock-waves. My family was shattered by Ingrid’s death–well, you’ll realize that: it was a particularly brutal murder, wasn’t it? But as well as that, they were ashamed. They were very conventional people, and what had upset them almost as much as the murder was learning about the relationship between Ingrid and Mary. It was the Sixties by then, but being gay wasn’t really accepted, you see. Not by older people at any rate. My parents didn’t understand about Ingrid, and they didn’t really want to understand. So they clamped a lid down on it and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened. I can see that now, although I couldn’t work it out at the time.’

‘And your parents wouldn’t have forgotten what had happened,’ said Krzystof. ‘It isn’t the kind of thing anyone ever could forget.’

‘No. From time to time, little bits of the truth got out, like steam hissing out from a boiling saucepan. It was a peculiar atmosphere to live in. And when I was born my parents were both well into their forties, so I grew up in–well, in the atmosphere of an older generation. Almost the aura of the Forties and Fifties. There were
whispers behind hands, and warning looks between aunts and cousins.’ She gave a half-smile. ‘I don’t mean to go all Brontë about it, but for years I sort of sensed there was something wrong somewhere. Something in the family history that people were very carefully not talking about. I used to have the most appalling nightmares.’

Krzystof said, half to himself, ‘
The barely understood secret became woven into childhood nightmares and childhood fears, and in the end, it called the poor mangled ghosts out of their uneasy resting places
…’

‘And at times,’ said Joanna, turning to look up at him, ‘the pretence spilled over into ordinary life. You read my notes.’

‘Yes. I had to, in case there was a clue in them that would help me to find you. And there was a clue,’ he said. ‘Only I was too dense to see it. You were writing about your own childhood, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. Writing it out, maybe. Catharsis,’ she said, looking across at Patrick. ‘Confronting the nightmare, isn’t that what you’d recommend?’

‘Possibly.’

‘What happened?’ asked Don.

‘When I was ten I finally found out about Ingrid–about what had happened to her. My father died, and I was helping to sort out some of his things. There was an old newspaper cutting: I read it in the attic–it was about the only place where I could ever be private.’ She paused again, and then said, ‘Afterwards I always associated the whole thing about Ingrid with the scent of the attic–dust and discarded books, and old furniture. Anyway, I
made a vow the way Selina March made a vow–only hers was to keep a shrine to her parents. My vow was to one day confront the monster who had killed my sister and spoiled my family’s life.’

‘And?’ This was Patrick again.

‘And,’ said Joanna, speaking very deliberately, ‘when I did see her, that afternoon at Moy, I saw a poor, mad, middle-aged woman, who was determinedly trying to cling to a grisly notoriety from the past. At first I simply couldn’t equate her with the creature I’d visualised for so many years.’ She paused, and then said, very softly, ‘And then she looked straight at me, and it was–it was the most extraordinary feeling. I felt as if I was being dragged down into a pit of icy black water. I never actually hated her, not directly, because I never knew Ingrid. So there wasn’t very much emotion about the meeting.’

She paused, and Emily, listening intently, thought: I bet there was, though.

‘But,’ said Joanna thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so spooked by anyone in my whole life.’

‘She’s a very remarkable creature,’ said Patrick gently. ‘If that intelligence and that strength could have been directed into more positive channels, she might have done anything, become anything.’

‘But it went wrong.’

‘Yes. She’s very very sick, of course.’

‘Has she ever had any happiness?’ Emily asked the question hesitantly, and Patrick did not immediately reply. She said, a bit defensively, ‘Listen, I’m not being stupid or bleeding-heart about it. It’s just that I’d like to
think she wasn’t always in that black icy pit that Joanna referred to just now.’

Patrick said, ‘Descriptive prose would be more Joanna’s thing than mine. But Mary’s life has been a–a very dark life. It’s been filled up with hatred and anger for a long long time. But occasionally, in that darkness, I think there have been moments of happiness.’

Joanna said, ‘Like unexpected splashes of sunshine in a dark old house.’

Patrick smiled at her. ‘I said the descriptions were your job, didn’t I? But, yes. For most of her life Mary has lived in the shadows. But—’

Joanna said softly, ‘But even someone who lives in a shadow-world occasionally steps into an unexpected patch of happiness.’

A patch of happiness…

Joanna was brushing her hair at the dressing-table in the Black Boar’s large double bedroom, and Krzystof was seated in the chair by the bed, watching her. He thought he would never want to take his eyes off her.

Joanna had put Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto on the portable tape recorder that Krzystof had brought from Teind House, and had taken a long hot bath with every drop of scented oil and bath essence she could find tipped in. Krzystof had opened a bottle of the Black Boar’s champagne, which they were now drinking. Neither of them had spoken much, because they had not needed to by that time. But when Joanna smiled at him in the mirror, Krzystof was so consumed by happiness that there
was a feeling of pressure inside his chest, as if his heart might burst. Fine thing if I succumb to a heart attack, he thought. Yes, but I never thought I’d get the chance to feel like this again.

Joanna said, a bit hesitantly, ‘How is your leg feeling?’

‘Bloody painful.’ He limped across the room to close the curtains. It was dark outside; Krzystof saw, with vague surprise, that it was well after midnight. ‘I expect you could sleep for a fortnight,’ he said.

‘Sleep be blowed,’ said Joanna, setting down her champagne glass, and coming towards him.

A patch of happiness…

Emily had been clearing up the plates and coffee cups, and she was just dunking everything in the sink in the cottage’s little kitchen when she heard the door open, and Patrick came quietly in.

He said, ‘Don’s driving Gillian down to the village to get her car. It’s still parked there, apparently.’

‘Oh.’ Emily squirted washing-up liquid into the bowl.

‘He’s offered her the spare bedroom here, for tonight. The police are still crawling all over Teind House.’

‘Yes, I know.’ In a minute she would have to turn round and face him in the knowledge, not of the nightmare that had just happened to them all, but of that other, earlier nightmare that had been between just the two of them.

I love your mind and I love everything about you
…he had said.
I can’t begin to think how I’m going to walk away from you, but you must believe that it would never work
…

And he had walked away, just as if they had never clung
together for those dizzying few moments, just as if their bodies had not fused, and–what was more important and far rarer–as if their minds had not met and blended and flowed seamlessly into one—