Mr. Flood's Last Resort(91)

“Wait in the dunes,” she said to me, without taking her eyes off Jimmy.

*

I WAITED in the dunes.

She would be back. She knew the tides and could predict the weather. She knew where to tread and where not to.

She would be back. Clothed in sand, crowned with shells, the scowling angel of Pearl Strand.

She would be back and I would promise never to tell on her again.

I waited in the dunes as the day lost its heat and the sky lost its light and the sea turned on its heel and went off to America.





CHAPTER 44




It is late by the time I get to Bridlemere. I park Gabriel’s car a few roads away, walk back to the house, and let myself in the kitchen door. I lock it behind me and pull the chain across. I grope for a torch under the sink and switch it on. It reflects eyeshine from the few cats loitering in the kitchen. They follow me hopefully as I move down the hall. Passing the door to Cathal’s workshop, I hear a thud. My heart stands still in my chest.

I listen again.

Nothing: just the pattering of cats up and down corridors and some far-off creak.

The door to Cathal’s workroom is open. I step into a strong smell of wood shavings and varnish. I flash the torch around the room. The curtains are drawn in Madame Sabine’s booth. The tools and the cogs have been tidied away and the workbench is clear now.

Apart from the head of a singularly ugly creature mounted on a plaque.

I hold the torch beam steady.

“Cathal, you old bastard,” I whisper. “You didn’t bury the thing at all.”

Manolete stares back at me with glassy marble eyes that were never his own, his mouth set in an eternal grimace.

Before I turn to go I take a small sharp chisel with a sturdy handle from the rack above the workbench and slip it into my bag.

*

I CLOSE the workshop door behind me and pass through the gap in the Great Wall of National Geographics into the hallway beyond. It’s wider than it has ever been. I’m surprised that Bridlemere has not pulled up the drawbridge and lowered the portcullis in Cathal’s absence.

But then the house knows me now.

The curiosities have an off-duty, at-ease feel to them tonight. They make sudden cameos in my moving torchlight. The glass eyes are unfocused, peering off in random directions; the raven sleeps with its beak folded into its feathers. The stoats slump over their cards and the shrunken head dozes. Even the four-faced angel seems to be dreaming in the darkness, her wings limp and her muzzles drooping.

I climb the stairs.

Mary Flood, pale footed, icy fingered, hare-eyed stare, still scatters rose petals on the first-floor landing. I pass her and keep going.

As I reach the top of the stairs I see the open door with a light on inside.

*

I CAN feel it. The room is filled with a breath-held waiting, as if it is crammed with surprise guests ready to jump out at me. I put my hand in my bag and with my fingers closed around the handle of the chisel I move forwards.

*

IN THE light thrown down by a row of chandeliers I see her.

Life-sized and beautiful, Maggie Dunne, Marguerite Flood.

Set on an easel in front of the window is the portrait Cathal sketched in his notebook, down to the half smile. But here also is the fiery richness of her hair as it once was. Just like the sun setting on autumn, just like her mother’s. I see for the first time that she has Cathal’s eyes.

Looking past the canvas to today’s scene, the window seat is empty now. But the curtains are still here and the cushions haven’t changed: braided black damask.

I imagine the painting of it.

Maggie, turned to the window but looking back into the room, her eyes a little glazed, daydreaming, or perhaps bored by the long minutes keeping still. And Cathal, dancing to and fro before the canvas, conducting light and line with his deft brushes.

Along the opposite wall chairs are arranged as if spectators are expected. On one of them sits Gabriel, watching me.

*

HE LEANS forwards, elbows on knees. His dark blond hair raked on end by his fingers. He is pretending to be calm, casual. But I can see the veins that have risen in his temples and in his forearms and the sweat on his lip.

And I can smell him. The bitter panic of the hours spent tracking me, of waiting for me.

“Cathal’s dead,” I say.

“I know. They phoned.” He sits back in his chair and nods towards Maggie’s portrait. “An uncanny likeness.”

“Where’s the original?”

“He did away with her, isn’t that what you thought all along?”

“Cathal was no murderer, and besides, he loved her.”

“For fuck’s sake, Maud,” he murmurs. “Why do you always take his side?”

I hear a crash below. Gabriel goes to the door and closes it.

“He’s here too? Your sidekick?”

Something made of glass shatters extravagantly.

I think of all the terrible priceless objects. “He’s destroying the place.”

Gabriel lights his cigarette. “He’s looking for Mary’s will.”

“Her will?”

“Some years ago, Mammy and I fell out. She instructed that on Cathal’s death Bridlemere was to be sold and the proceeds given to Cedar House. All of this was hers, you see. Cathal had nothing.”