Authors: Eliza Graham
He gave his head the slightest of shakes. ‘I was a precocious boy.’
I could imagine it. In this wrinkled, gaunt old man there still lingered something of the youth he’d been.
‘And then shortly afterwards you went off to university?’ My grandmother went to America with Lord Dorner, who never returned because he died out there. I was wondering how much more time Benny and Granny had spent under the same roof. But Benny was asleep.
I spent a quiet day, catching up on some sleep and emailing James and Andrew. At lunchtime I helped Fiona cook us bowls of pasta. ‘Better to eat now,’ she said. ‘While we can.’
I rang the cancer charity who were going to help with nursing care at nights to warn them that we were approaching that stage.
When I went up to see Benny I read to him again. More
Great Expectations.
Pip was enjoying his wealth in London now. Over-enjoying it. Estella was well and truly breaking his heart.
But Benny was distracted and looking for something. ‘Where’s Max? He hasn’t been up to see me all day.’
I couldn’t remember seeing the dog for hours, either. ‘I’ll go downstairs and bring him up,’ I said.
Sarah was sitting with a cookery book in the kitchen. ‘Every Christmas I swear I’ll cook less and save myself the problem of leftovers.’ A shadow passed over her face. ‘Of course, next year …’
Next year Benny wouldn’t be needing her to cook Christmas lunch at Fairfleet.
‘I came to find Max for Benny,’ I said softly.
She rose. ‘I let him out. Normally he’d be barking to come back in again by now, he doesn’t much like the cold.’
I opened the kitchen door and whistled for the dog.
‘That’s strange.’ Sarah came to join me. ‘Come on, Max, it’s freezing with the back door open, and your master wants you.’
Still there was no sound of the terrier. I picked up the torch. ‘May I borrow your boots, Sarah?’
‘Go ahead. Take my coat, too.’
I whistled and called for the dog as I walked to the lake. Years ago Granny had told me how a dog of hers had chased a bird out onto the ice. The ice had cracked and the dog would have drowned but for my grandfather’s speed in running along the end of the jetty and reaching out for its collar.
But the ice was already melting on the lake. Max wouldn’t have run out here.
I walked back to the kitchen, rehearsing how I was going to tell Benny that his dog had disappeared.
Sarah met me in the kitchen. One look at my face told her of my lack of success. ‘I’ll try out the front,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he’s wandered out that way. He’s not usually as interested in that side of the house, though.’
‘I’ll come too.’
As we walked through the hall she stopped. ‘Can you hear that?’
I stood still as well and heard scratching on the basement door.
‘I’ll go and get the key,’ she said.
When she unlocked the door Max rushed out.
‘Did you go down to the old pantry?’ I asked Sarah. ‘Perhaps he followed you down?’
She shook her head. ‘Not today.’ She bent down to pat the dog. ‘How did you get down there, Maxie boy?’
Some old memory, some piece of trivia, was trying to nudge its way to the front of my mind. I must have been frowning as I stood there with the dog.
‘What is it?’
‘There was a door down there in the basement. They used it for deliveries.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a door.’
‘It’s kept locked. Or used to be. My grandmother was worried about burglars.’
‘But you think someone opened the door and Max got in that way?’
We looked at one another. ‘Let’s go down together,’ she said. ‘With the dog.’
We switched on the basement light and went down the steps. Max’s wet footprints were the only thing I could see that were out of the ordinary. The old door with its faded green paint was locked.
‘Where’s the key?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘I’ll ask Benny when I take the dog up to him.’ And we climbed back up the steps.
But Benny was sleeping again when I opened his door. Max lay down on the rug beside his master’s bed and fell into a similar state. I sat watching them, wondering whether the dog sensed that his master was very close to the end of his life. Tonight I could see signs that Benny had advanced a further stage. Death is strange in its moves, sometimes jumping several phases in just hours.
I pulled the quilt up over his hands. The skin felt very cold to my touch and the tips of his fingers were blue now. He opened his eyes.
‘My secret,’ he said. ‘Was going to tell Harriet. But I can’t, can I?’ He looked forlorn, a small boy lost.
‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Pretend I’m Harriet.’
He was quiet for so long I thought he was drifting off again.
‘One secret leads to another,’ he said, sounding very old and very tired suddenly. ‘You tell one person one thing. Then something else happens that also has to be kept hidden.’
He groaned.
‘Pain?’ I asked.
‘It feels more … a presence.’
‘I’m going to give you your drugs now and make you comfortable for the night.’ It was only half-past seven, but it felt very late. ‘We’ll talk when you’ve rested.’
Death was playing Grandmother’s Footsteps with us, suddenly accelerating towards us while our backs were turned. Benny’s lips were slightly blue as well now. I unhooked the oxygen mask and put it over his face. He closed his eyes. When I’d tidied the room I went downstairs.
Sarah was making soup for our supper. She saw from my face that a change had occurred and put down her knife, very slowly. ‘It’s coming, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘But the doctor didn't seem too worried yesterday?’
‘Things can change very quickly at this stage of an illness.’ And I remembered the glance the doctor and I had exchanged. We’d both known.
‘When?’ she asked. ‘Days?’
‘Possibly.’ Possibly less, I thought. ‘There’s still more he seems to want to say. Do you have telephone numbers for anyone who ought to know that he’s slipping away?’
‘He spoke to them all yesterday. Made it clear, from what I gathered, that he was saying goodbye.’ I wondered why he hadn’t told any of these old friends what was on his mind.
I checked on Benny and saw that he was sleeping. The doctor took my call when I rang the surgery and we agreed how I would manage Benny’s medication from now on. He promised to look in on us the next day.
Sarah and I ate our supper quickly and in silence. When we’d finished stacking the dishes in the dishwasher Sarah told me she’d like to join me in my vigil, too. ‘I’ll come up at midnight, if there’s no change.’
‘I’d like that. Get some sleep first, though. I’ll let Max out. And make sure he comes back in safely.’
‘I’ll send him down to you.’
Sarah went upstairs and shortly afterwards Max pattered downstairs and I let him out into the moonlit garden. He barked once and then sniffed around in what was left of the snow. I could see the black, white and tan of his coat. He raised his head and growled.
‘Come on,’ I urged him. ‘Let’s get back upstairs to Benny.’
He growled again. Someone tall stepped into view.
‘Hello again, Rosebud,’ said Cathal.
32
‘You,’ I said. ‘It was you who unlocked that basement door.’No balaclava tonight. Cathal wore a black jacket and a pair of respectable jeans. Only the eyes were the same: those staring blue eyes. And the dent in the side of his skull.
‘Where did you get the key?’ My heart was pounding, but I was determined he wouldn’t hear fear in my voice.
‘I kept hold of it when I left, years ago. Never thought I’d need it again, mind.’ He sounded amused. ‘But when I came back to do the snow shovelling it was useful for me to have somewhere to sleep.’
My spine tingled. But not from the cold. ‘You were sleeping here at Fairfleet?’
‘Just like old times, eh? Mind you, you’ll remember that conditions in the basement aren’t exactly comfortable, Rosebud. Still, needs must.’
My mobile was in my pocket. I wrapped my fingers round it, hoping I could press the right keys.
‘What do you want, Cathal?’
‘You came back here under a false name to unduly influence a dying man into leaving his house to you.’
‘I came back using my lawful married name.’
He looked put out, but only briefly. ‘You’ll be struck off.’
‘No I won’t. We’ve never discussed his will.’
‘How can you prove it, though? All those hours sitting there alone with him.’
I shrugged. But my fear of Cathal pulsed through my body. Even if I called out, Sarah might not hear; her bedroom faced the front of the house.
‘I’ve no idea what his financial plans are,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Now get out.’ I pulled my mobile out of my pocket and pushed the keyboard.
‘Oh you can call 999 if you want. But since they shut down the police station in the village you’ll have to wait for a car to come out from town. Can be a twenty-minute wait this time of year.’
I kept my features neutral.
‘What about the old bloke? Perhaps I should let him know.’
‘He guessed.’
‘Shall I tell him you wanted to kill me?’
‘He knows all about the fire. And this isn’t the time to discuss it.’ Upstairs Benny lay close to death. I didn’t want his house contaminated by this man while Benny’s soul still resided here.
‘I still don’t know why you felt such an irrational hatred of me, you and your brother.’
‘You were after Mum’s property. But worst of all, because of your drunkenness, you stopped us helping Mum in the fire.’
I could still see Andrew trying to put out the flames with a rug and Cathal pushing him away.
‘I loved Clarissa. And it wasn’t me who started that fire.’
‘Where did you hide the letter?’ I asked, bringing the fight back to Cathal. ‘The one Mum wrote. You must have taken it while I was in the basement.’
‘Yes. I let myself in while you were down there, using the garden door. You were asleep up on the steps.’
It was so long ago. But hadn’t I dreamed, as I lay on the cold stone staircase, that some devil or monster had entered?
‘I knew you’d been in the storage room, Rosebud. So I searched the drawers and found an envelope addressed to the lawyer. I knew exactly what Clarrie had been up to.’
‘What did you do with it?’
He didn’t say anything. I was about to repeat the question.
‘Now I understand,’ he muttered his eyes looking wild.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘That old bitch,’ he said. ‘That old Sappho-worshipping dyke. I was right about her.’
I waited.
‘That’s what she had stuffed into her skirt.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Again I kept my voice calm.
‘Alice Smith. And your mother’s letter.’
‘Smithy?’
‘She came back here that next morning, muttering about the police, while you were cooling your heels in the cellar and your mother and brother were outside looking for you.’
I remembered Mum telling me that she had missed Smithy. It had seemed so poignant that only a few minutes had made the difference between help coming in time to save Mum and the fire.
‘I put the letter down by the telephone. She must have picked it up.’ Cathal’s eyes were like pale stones now.
Smithy had seen the lawyer’s address on the envelope, realized that the letter was important, needed posting. But she’d failed, for some reason, to do this before she’d died.
‘I followed her in the van, to make sure she’d gone. I didn’t mean … I just wanted to give her a bit of a fright so she wouldn’t bother us again.’
Smithy had had an accident on her bike. Which had killed her eventually. I remembered Dad and Marie breaking the news to us. Smithy’s death had seemed like just another manifestation of the evil shadow hanging over us.
‘You ran her over, didn’t you?’
‘I tapped her.’
‘You
tapped
her?’
‘Just her back wheel, but the idiot lost control on the ice. Seemed to throw herself all over the road. I couldn’t miss her.’
And Smithy had died weeks later, never recovering consciousness.
‘When I saw you were back in the area I thought you’d found out what I did.’
But I was still thinking about Mum’s letter. Why hadn’t someone in the hospital retrieved it and given it to Smithy’s niece?
Cathal’s old ability to read my thoughts hadn’t abandoned him. He sniffed. ‘If the envelope was where I think it was, in her skirt pocket, nobody could have read it.’
‘What do you mean?’
He came closer to me. ‘Have you never seen someone haemorrhaging from their chest, nurse? Surely you must have. Blood soaks their clothes. And everything else.’
For all my medical training and experience I felt nauseous.
‘The hospital staff probably had to cut her out of her clothes to get the lines in. They’d have thrown her things into the incinerator. And because Alice Smith never woke up again, she couldn’t blab to anyone, could she?’
I thought of Mum’s letter, drenched in crimson, illegible, cast into a hospital incinerator, lost for good. And as I did, all fear of Cathal burned away.
‘Do your worst,’ I told him. ‘But tell me, Cathal, why us? Why did you pick on Mum?’
‘She needed me.’ His face lost its aggression. ‘I knew she was a lost soul and I could help her. I’m good at being a shoulder to lean on. I helped my mother when my father died and left us homeless and penniless.’ He gave a scoffing laugh and the aggression returned to his features. ‘Or I would have helped the daft cow if she hadn’t got the wrong end of the stick about me. My sisters poisoned her against me.’
I bet they had.
‘I went from having everything: the house, the schooling, the position, to having nothing.’
And when he discovered that Mum had inherited Fairfleet, that she was single, mentally unwell and lonely, he’d found a way of clawing back his privileges.
‘But people are always so suspicious, Rosebud. So inclined to judge harshly.’
He lurched towards me.
‘Get out now.’ Again I checked the mobile.
He stepped towards me. ‘What are you doing with that phone?’
‘Leave us alone.’
Sarah stood in the kitchen door. ‘I heard your threats. I’ve already called the police and they’re on the way.’