Mr. Flood's Last Resort(50)

I inadvertently glance towards St. Dymphna. She sits on the hearthrug, small and still and suddenly far older than her fifteen years, with her dark eyes burning and her face unearthly pale.

“We need to find Maggie,” says Renata. “There’s something we could try.”

“What is it?”

“We could try asking Mary.”

St. Dymphna watches me closely, coldly.

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” I whisper.

St. Dymphna scrabbles to her feet and is gone.





CHAPTER 22




The best place to start is right here in the kitchen at Bridlemere. Supernatural occurrences have taken place in this room. The best time to start is right now, when there is no sign of the old man.

I push a chair in front of the kitchen door. If Cathal tries to come in I’ll have time to cover everything up and pretend I’m washing the floor. Otherwise the back door is locked and there are no cats in the scullery.

These are the perfect conditions for working a spirit board.

I have a shot glass from Renata’s sideboard and two cereal boxes opened up and stuck together. I have drawn letters from the alphabet and numbers and written YES and NO in the two top corners. I sit down on the kitchen floor and wait, with my fingertips on the top of the glass.

This happens, in this order: my nose itches, the crack of my arse itches, the tap drips. Then: nothing.

I take out the photo of Mary and Gabriel and look into the space where Mary’s face should be.

I close my eyes.

“Are you there, Mary?”

The tap drips, the clock ticks, a cat scratches at the back door. After a while my fingertips cramp on the edge of the glass and one of my legs falls asleep.

“Mary, if you have a minute?”

I stretch out my leg and rub it. Then I look around the kitchen, edified by the immaculate floor. If only I could get my own home into this kind of order. I put my fingers back on the glass, close my eyes, and concentrate. I throw out a question.

“Do you know what happened to Maggie Dunne?”

This happens, in this order: the kettle switches itself on and starts to boil, the door to the pantry opens, and the glass begins to move, slowly, jerkily towards— YES.

The glass stops and waits, shuddering under my fingertips; the kettle switches itself off.

I close my eyes.

“Was she murdered?”

Nothing. Then a powerful smell of earth and leaf mold as a sudden mist of moisture hits my face. I open my eyes. The room darkens abruptly, although it is still sunny outside the kitchen window.

The glass begins to tremble, drawing my attention back to the spirit board. My finger does nothing; it merely goes along for the ride as the glass moves in slow circles around the word . . .

YES.

The top pops off a lemonade bottle and the clock falls off the wall. The kitchen lights turn themselves on and off and crockery starts to shake on the dresser. A milk jug skips from its hook and crashes to the floor and the knife drawer slowly opens.

I would run if I could take my finger off the glass, but it is held rooted to the spot by a strange quivering magnetism.

YES. YES. YES.

I take a deep breath. The glass bucks under my finger, as if it knows what I’m about to ask.

“Were you murdered, Mary?”

The glass hops and the door to the pantry slams shut and flies open. The packets of rice and sugar and semolina, the tins of ham and peach slices begin to fling themselves off the shelves. Bags hit the ground, bursting and rupturing; jars explode into shards.

“Who did it, Mary?”

The table judders and the kettle switches itself on again, with the noise of water rushing to the boil.

The glass cleaves to the board and refuses to move.

I wait.

“Was it Cathal?”

Nothing.

I try another question. “Is Maggie here?”

The glass spins, wrenches itself out from under my finger and shatters itself against the wall.

*

I FOLD the spirit board, put the packets and tins back on the shelves, and take up the broom.

And then I see them. Heading towards the back door, two sets of footprints in the mess that dusts the floor. They pull apart, each on their own trajectory halfway across the kitchen. As they draw closer to the back door they change. The last prints, just near the threshold, are the dabbed pattern of toes and no heel: the prints of two people running.





CHAPTER 23




At the café Sam takes a seat, not in the corner but over near the window. I head to the lavatory, past the waiter who narrows his eyes at me in greeting. I ignore him. I am buoyed up by a great and happy coincidence: this morning I put on a dress.

A rare choice born not from some unearthly premonition but because the dress was the only clean garment available besides a pair of ungainly culottes of unknown provenance. I thank any and all listening saints for this premium stroke of good fortune as I slip off my tabard and rummage in my bag for a lipstick.

Then I look at myself in the mirror.

Then I immediately revoke my thanks in case any of the saints are listening and think twice about the lipstick. Then I tighten my ponytail and remember Renata’s disparaging comments about this exact same ensemble when I presented myself, some months ago, with great reluctance and even greater misgivings, for a conscripted date with the satellite TV repairman. Renata said that in this dress (gray shift, stylishly demure) with my hair pulled back I looked like an uptight novitiate knocking at Mother Superior’s gates. I took that as a compliment.