Mr. Flood's Last Resort(92)

A muffled thud from below.

“Just before her death she drafted another will that left the house to me.” Gabriel takes a drag of his cigarette.

“What made her change her mind?”

Gabriel breathes out. “Who knows?”

“And what about Maggie, was she in the will?”

“No.” Gabriel walks over to the window. He looks out at the dark wilderness of the garden.

“Tell me where she is, Gabriel.”

He gestures with his cigarette. “In the well.”

“She’s dead?”

“Of course she’s bloody dead.”

He retakes his seat. “She’d run away again. Only this time she reached London. She got into the house. It was awful.”

“What happened?”

He rubs his hand across his forehead. “Cathal was away; she waited until Mary went out and Stephen and I were alone.” He pauses. “She had a knife. She cut herself and then tried to cut me. We managed to get out into the garden but she chased us. We were petrified.”

Downstairs there’s a scraping noise: the sound of someone moving heavy furniture.

“We tried to hide in the icehouse but she found us. She slipped and fell.” He glances at me. “Just like you did. We ran out and tried to shut her in. But she kept on coming.”

He takes another drag of his cigarette and exhales quickly. “Then I saw she’d hurt herself. So I ran back and I hit her. I thought I could knock her out, like they do in the films. But it’s different in real life.” He hesitates. “So we dragged her to the well.”

“Christ.”

“We just wanted her to stop.”

Somewhere beyond Bridlemere life continues as normal. People make cups of tea, watch television, go to the pub, and don’t kill their siblings.

“Did Mary know?”

“I went running to her.” Gabriel drops his cigarette on the floor and steps on it. “I was young. I wept, terrified. She said she would help me fix it. That it was an accident.”

We sit for a while in silence.

“If Mary thought it was an accident, why didn’t she call someone?”

Gabriel shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“And Cathal,” I ask. “Did he know about any of this?”

He lights another cigarette. Takes a few puffs. “If he did, I’d have been inside by now.”

“But he had something on you? He spoke about an insurance policy.”

“Mary had given him her revised will for safekeeping. Sealed in an envelope.” He looks at me. “But what really worried me was her confession.”

A hammering noise sounds deep in the house. A blunt rhythmic thump, like a heartbeat.

“Her confession?”

“She told me that because she couldn’t speak her sins she had written a confession. It was to be her secret, hidden where no one, not even Cathal, could find it.” He takes a drag on his cigarette. “She refused to tell me where.”

Downstairs there’s a rending noise, a crash, then silence.

Gabriel runs his hands through his hair. “My mother was a liability.”

I think of Stephen hopping down the garden path that day, clutching his manbag. “But you found it? The confession?”

“Not yet, but then neither did Cathal.”

“But he still had Mary’s will?”

“Stephen and I leant on him for years but he wouldn’t give it to us. The old bastard knew I was desperate to get my hands on it. He thought it was the money I was after.”

“But it wasn’t.”

Gabriel frowns. “How could I let this house change hands with my bloody sister down the well?”

I look out of the window; darkness hides the Armageddon of cats and rubbish and overgrown foliage. I can only see my own face reflected back at me.

The banging starts again.

“Then you came along, Maud,” he says softly.

“And you lied to me.”

“You mistook me for someone else; I just went along with it. At first I did it to stop you from interfering, to keep you away from the house. I didn’t want you getting caught up in this.”

I almost believe him.

“But you wouldn’t drop it. Then it started to look as if the old man was opening up to you. So I took the risk that things might pan out the way I wanted them to.”

“How would that be?”

“With no one getting hurt.”

I stare at him, incredulous. “You sent those thugs round to Renata’s, didn’t you?”

“She phoned me and told me about the envelope. I didn’t know what the fuck was in it.” He shrugs. “I told them not to touch her. Just to find it and shake her up a bit.”

I bite my tongue until the urge passes.

“I panicked, Maud. You were getting too close, uncovering these messages. Then I started thinking that maybe the old bastard had found something out, that he was planting these clues to torment me.”

The banging ceases and is replaced by drilling.

“What is he even doing?”

“Securing the house.”

The drill whines then stops again.

“Do you know what it’s like to really hate someone, Maud?”