Authors: Jonathan Coe
‘What did I tell you? That wasn’t a policeman at all. And look, here’s the rest.’
He handed Phoebe a peaked cap, and as he did so, a small glass vial was disclosed on the shelf behind it.
‘Potassium chloride,’ he read slowly, examining the label. ‘Have you ever heard of this?’
‘It’s a poison,’ said Phoebe. ‘Mortimer used to keep it in his medicine chest. Only the last time I saw it, it was full.’
She pointed at the level of the liquid, which now filled only about a quarter of the bottle.
‘Is it deadly?’
Phoebe nodded. ‘I remember now – the day he sent me away, just before I left, he was asking me where the syringes were. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Perhaps this might have something to do with it.’
‘Could be.’
‘Hang on, then – I’ll go and check if they’re still there.’
She hurried off in the direction of her former employer’s sick chamber, where it took very little time to establish that at least one syringe had gone missing from its case. But when she returned to inform Michael of this news, a surprise awaited her. Roddy’s naked corpse was still lying on the bed, but otherwise the room was empty. Michael himself had vanished.
∗
It had been instinct, more than anything else, which had drawn him to the elaborately gilt-framed mirror on the bedroom wall. A mirror was a doorway to the underworld: Michael had learned this by now, and so it was the work of only a few moments to slide his fingers behind the frame and ease it away from the wall. The mirror swung open on a stiff hinge, revealing a black, rectangular cavity; and as soon as he stepped through into the darkness, it closed behind him widiout a sound. When Michael tried to push it open again he could obtain no purchase, and he knew that, for the time being, the only way to go was forward. He could see and hear nothing; but there was a stale, musty smell in the air, and the bare-bricked walls to either side of him were dry and flaking. Very tentatively, he put one foot in front of the other, and immediately realized that he was standing at the top of a staircase; but he had descended only three steps when the floor beneath him levelled out, and he could sense that he had now entered upon a wider space. He took six paces to his right, and found himself touching a wall: this time it was smooth and plastered. He started edging around this wall, and after taking two changes of direction and bumping into something heavy – a table, perhaps – his hands touched upon the very thing that he had been praying for: a light switch. And, miraculously, it worked.
Michael was standing in a very narrow but high-ceilinged chamber, apparently built into the thickness of the wall. Besides the short staircase he had just descended, there was also a tiny doorway leading off to the left. Standing against one of the walls, but large enough to take up most of the available space, was a desk; and placed on top of it, a heavy, unwieldy set of radio apparatus. The desk and the radio were thick with dust, and in the four or five decades (so Michael hazarded) since they had last been touched, whole dynasties of spiders had been busy weaving blanket upon blanket of fine, powdery webs. The room was windowless; but a thin trail of aerial wire could be seen running up the wall and through a hole in the ceiling, presumably to emerge on the roof of the house itself.
‘So this is where you did it, you cunning devil,’ Michael muttered. ‘A regular litde back room boy!’
Impatiently he swept aside most of the dust and the cobwebs. The radio seemed to have been battery operated and, unsurprisingly, it did not respond when he tried flicking the various switches; but a quick search of the desk drawers proved more rewarding. There were maps, almanacs and railway timetables from the 1940s, along with a German–English dictionary and what appeared to be some sort of address book. Leafing through it, Michael came across not only BISCUIT, CHEESE AND CELERY but also the codenames of other double agents – CARROT, SWEETIE, PEPPERMINT, SNOW, DRAGONFLY – all with addresses and telephone numbers written alongside tliem. Personal details of many high-ranking figures from the military, the War Cabinet and the coalition government had also been noted down. A leather-bound accounting book was filled with parallel rows of figures in pounds and Deutschmarks, while a page at the back listed the names and addresses of several British and German bank accounts. And there were, in addition, some loose sheets of paper, one of which in particular caught his eye. It was headed:
L 9265–53 Sqn.
This, Michael knew, had been the number of Godfrey’s plane and squadron. Most of the figures which followed were incomprehensible to him, although
‘30/11’
was clearly an indication of the date, and some of the other numbers looked as though they might refer to positions of latitude and longitude. It was certain, in any case, that he had at last stumbled upon the proof of Lawrence’s treachery: his calculated betrayal of Godfrey for financial gain.
Michael was now torn between two conflicting impulses: to return to Phoebe (if he could) and explain his discovery, or to try his luck with the other doorway and continue exploring. For once, his spirit of adventure won the day.
The second exit led directly on to another staircase, this one steeper and more uneven than the last. By leaving the door to the little room wedged open, Michael found that he had just enough light to illuminate his progress, and before long he calculated that he had descended to the level of the ground floor, at which point the steps ended. He was now standing at the entrance to a narrow passage. Darkness began to encroach.
In the wall of the passage, after only a few paces, he came upon a wooden door. It was bolted at the top, but the mechanism was well oiled and seemed to have been in recent use. He opened it without difficulty, and found himself looking out, as he had expected, into the billiard room. Dawn would not come for an hour or two yet, but a certain amount of moonlight was peeping through gaps in the curtains, and in the shadows he could make out Mark’s corpse, which had now been covered with a bloodstained sheet. His severed arms still rose grotesquely, like savage totems, from the pockets of the billiard table. Michael shuddered, and was about to withdraw when he noticed a metallic glint at the table’s edge. It was Mark’s cigarette lighter. This was too useful to pass up, so he stole across the room and grabbed it before beating a grateful retreat into the tunnel, the entrance to which was seamlessly concealed behind a rack of billiard cues clamped to the oak panelling.
Michael had not gone much further along the passage before the roof and walls began to close in, making movement more difficult. For a while he had to crouch almost on his hands and knees, and he could tell that the floor was beginning to slope steeply downwards. Once or twice, twin pinpoints of light in the distance would betoken the presence of a watchful rat, which would then scurry away at his approach. The tunnel remained dry, however, and the mortar would sometimes crumble as he brushed against it, so he was surprised when he began to hear a distinct dripping noise, irregular but insistent.
Plip. Plip. Plip.
At this point, too, a flickering light began to appear, getting stronger all the time, and the space between the walls began to broaden out. Suddenly the passage opened into what was almost a room. The roof, composed of stone flags, was supported by beams, and the four walls formed a square some sixteen feet across.
Plip. Plip.
The source of the dripping was readily apparent. The first that Michael saw of it was a fantastically enlarged shadow, dancing unsteadily in the light from a burning candle set on the floor. It was the shadow of a human body, trussed up neatly and tied by the ankles to a meat hook screwed into one of the beams. A small incision had been made in the neck, from which blood flowed in a steady trickle, across the face, down through the tangle of clotted hair, and into a heavy steel bucket which was now almost full.
Plip. Plip. Plip.
It was the body of Dorothy Winshaw; and beside it, sitting on a little three-legged stool, was her uncle Mortimer. He looked up at Michael as he emerged from the tunnel, but it was impossible to say whose eyes were more tired and expressionless: the eyes of Mortimer, or those of the frozen, slowly rotating cadaver.
Plip.
‘Is she dead?’ said Michael at last.
‘I think so,’ said the old man. ‘But it’s rather hard to say. It’s taken longer than I thought.’
‘What a horrible way to kill someone.’
Mortimer thought about this for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
Plip. Plip.
‘Mr Owen,’ Mortimer continued, speaking with great effort. ‘I do hope you aren’t going to expend any pity on members of my family. They don’t deserve it. You should know that better than anybody.’
‘Yes, but all the same …’
‘It’s too late now, in any case. What’s done is done.’
Plip. Plip. Plip.
‘We’re underneath the sitting room, in case you were wondering,’ said Mortimer. ‘If there was anybody up there now, we could hear them. I stood here some hours ago, and listened to all the fuss they made when Sloane read out the will, and they realized they weren’t going to get a penny out of me. A childish contrivance, I suppose.’ He grimaced. ‘Vain. Foolish. Like everything else.’
Plip.
Mortimer closed his eyes, as if in pain.
‘I’ve led an idle life, Mr Owen. Wasted, for the most part. I was born into money and like the rest of my family I was too selfish to want to do any good with it. Unlike them, at least, I never did anyone much harm. But I thought I might redeem myself, slightly, by doing mankind a small favour before I died. Ridding the world of a handful of vermin.’
Plip. Plip.
‘It was you, Mr Owen, who finally persuaded me. That book of yours. It gave me the idea, and suggested one or two possible … approaches. Now that it’s done, however, I must confess to a certain sense of anti-climax.’
As he spoke these words, Mortimer was toying in his right hand with a large syringe filled with clear liquid. He noticed that Michael was watching him apprehensively.
‘Oh, you needn’t worry,’ he said. ‘I don’t intend to kill you. Or Miss Barton.’ His expression seemed to soften for a moment at the mention of this name. ‘You will look after her, won’t you, Michael? She’s been good to me. And I can see that she likes you. It would make me happy, to think …’
‘Of course I will. And Tabitha, too.’
‘Tabitha?’
‘I’ll make sure that she’s not taken back to that place. I don’t know how, but – I won’t let it happen.’
Plip.
‘But you do know, of course,’ said Mortimer, ‘that she’s mad?’
Michael stared at him.
‘Oh, yes.’ He smiled distractedly. ‘Quite, quite mad.’
‘But I’ve just been talking to her. She seemed perfectly –’
‘It runs in the family, you see. Mad as hatters, queer as coots, and nutty as fruitcakes, every one of us. Because there comes a point, you know, Michael’ – he leaned forward and pointed at him with the syringe – ‘there comes a point, where greed and madness become practically indistinguishable. One and the same thing, you might almost say. And there comes another point, where the willingness to tolerate greed, and to live alongside it, and even to assist it, becomes a sort of madness too. Which means that we’re all stuck with it, in other words. The madness is never going to end. At least not …’ (his voice faded to a ghostly whisper) ‘… not for the living.’
Plip. Plip.
‘Take Miss Barton, for instance.’ Mortimer’s speech was starting to slur. ‘Such a kind girl. So trusting. And yet I was deceiving her all that time. My legs were in reasonable shape. A few ulcers, here and there, but nothing to stop me walking around. I simply liked to be fussed over, you see.’
Plip. Plip. Plip.
‘I’m so tired, Michael. That’s the irony of it, really. There’s only ever been one thing wrong with me, and I haven’t even mentioned it to Miss Barton. She has no idea. Can you guess what it is?’
Michael shook his head.
‘Insomnia. I can’t sleep. Can’t sleep at all. An hour or two, every now and again. Three, at the most. Ever since Rebecca died.’
Plip.
‘And what a night it’s been! It’s all been far, far too much. The exertion. I thought I’d never make it, to be frank with you.’ He slumped forward, his head in his hands. ‘I’d so like to sleep, Michael. You will help me, won’t you?’
Michael took the syringe from his outstretched hand, and watched as Mortimer rolled up his sleeve.
‘I don’t think I have the strength left in my fingers any more, that’s the pity of it. Just put me to sleep, Michael, that’s all that I ask.’
Michael looked at him, undecided.
‘Out of the kindness of your heart. Please.’
Michael took hold of Mortimer’s hand. The skin was hanging off his arms. He had the eyes of an imploring spaniel.
Plip. Plip.
‘They send dogs to sleep, don’t they? When they’re old, and sick?’
And he supposed, put like that, that it didn’t sound so bad.
CHAPTER NINE
With Gagarin to the Stars
‘No explanations,’ said Michael. ‘If you sleep, if you dream, you must accept your dreams. It’s the role of the dreamer.’
Phoebe shielded her eyes against the sunlight. ‘Sounds plausible. What does it mean?’
‘I was just thinking: there are three dreams I had when I was a kid which I can still remember clearly. And now two of them have come true: more or less.’
‘Only two? What about the third?’
Michael shrugged. ‘You can’t have everything.’
They were standing on the terrace at Winshaw Towers, looking out over the lawns, the gardens, the tarn, and the magnificent sweep of the moors beyond. Bright sunshine had succeeded the storm, although there were felled trees, fallen tiles and windswept debris everywhere to testify to its effect.
It was almost midday: the end of a long, gruelling morning, during which they seemed to have done nothing but give statements to the policemen who had been swarming all over the house ever since Phoebe had walked to the village and raised the alarm. Shordy after ten o’clock, the first journalists and press photographers had arrived. So far the police had been successful in holding them at bay, but they were even now spread out on the road like an army waiting in ambush, keeping the house covered with a whole arsenal of telephoto lenses, or sitting sulkily in their cars hoping to pounce on anybody who dared venture down the drive.