The Death of Mrs. Westaway(49)

“What do you mean?”

“You know.”

Hal pushed her hands inside her pockets to hide their trembling. She would not show this old woman she was afraid.

“Get out of my way.”

“Just as you like. I came up to tell you, he wants you downstairs.”

“Who’s ‘he’?” Hal said. She tried to keep her voice steady, and it came out colder and sharper than she meant.

“Harding. He’s in the drawing room.”

Hal could not bring herself to say thank you, but she nodded, once, and Mrs. Warren turned to retreat into the shadows of the hallway.

Hal followed her, and was just shutting the door of her room behind her, when Mrs. Warren spoke, jerking her head back over her shoulder towards the room and the scattering of Hal’s belongings.

“She was into all that muck.”

“What?” Hal stopped with her hand on the knob, the door just ajar, a crack of room showing through the gap.

“Them cards. Tarry or whatever she called it. Pagan stuff, it was, devils and naked men. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have had them in the house. I would have burned them all. Disgusting things.”

“Who?” Hal said, but Mrs. Warren only continued slowly down the corridor as if she hadn’t heard, and Hal found herself bounding after her retreating back, grabbing the old woman’s wrist, harder than she meant, forcing her to turn back to face her. “Who? Who are you talking about?”

“Maggie.” Mrs. Warren spat the name like a swearword, her vehemence sending little flecks of spittle into Hal’s face. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll ask me no more questions. Now, let go of me.”

“Wha—” Hal gasped. The words hit like a slap in the face, and the questions rose up inside her, churning too quick to be caught. But the one that beat inside Hal’s skull was unsayable: Did she know?

Before Hal could do more than gasp, Mrs. Warren had wrenched her wrist out of Hal’s grip, with a strength Hal would not have given her credit for, and hurried away down the stairs, silent and malevolent.

Hal let out a long, shuddering breath and then went back inside the bedroom, her heart beating fast enough to make her feel dizzy with it.

Maggie. Her mother’s nickname. Maggie. Her mother who had been here, more than twenty years ago. What had Mrs. Warren meant in bringing her up, here, now? Was it a threat? Did she know the truth? But if so, why had she stood by and said nothing?

There were no answers—and at last, for want of anything else, Hal picked up the tarot cards and began to pack them back into the tin. Mrs. Warren’s threat echoed in her head. She wouldn’t really dare to burn them, would she? It seemed ridiculous—and yet there was something about the venom in her voice that made Hal think it might be a real possibility.

There was no lock on the bedroom door, or on the case, so all Hal could do was pack the cards away inside their tin, push them deep into her suitcase, and hope for the best.

What had made her pack them in the first place? It wasn’t as though she believed.

Hal zipped up the case and turned to leave the room—but then, with a sudden misgiving, she stopped, opened the case, and pushed the tin into her back pocket, alongside the photograph. Let Mrs. Warren snoop. Let her come and look through every pocket of the case. It was only as she reached the top of the narrow, windowless stairs that a thought came to her—a memory of yesterday, of the tap, tap of Mrs. Warren’s cane on the wooden steps of the secret staircase.

But the woman standing outside her doorway just now had held no cane, and her approach had been utterly silent.

The thought made Hal shiver for no reason that she could put her finger on, and she wished again that there was a lock on the bedroom door. She had never felt the need for one before coming here, but the thought of that bitter old woman, creeping silently about the house at night, opening the door to Hal’s room . . .

Hal paused, looking back along the narrow, dark corridor, remembering the way Mrs. Warren had stood there in the darkness. What was she doing? Listening? Watching?

She was about to carry on downstairs when something caught her eye, a darkness in the dark, and she made her way back to stand in front of the closed door, running her fingers over the wood, feeling, rather than seeing, how very wrong she had been.

There was a lock on the door. Two, in fact. They were long, thick bolts, top and bottom.

But they were on the outside.

CHAPTER 20


* * *

There was no sign of Mrs. Warren when Hal finally descended, and for a moment she stood in the front hallway, trying to get her bearings and remember which of the wooden doors hid the drawing room. She had passed it on her way to breakfast, but then the door had stood open. Now they were all closed, and the long, monotonous hallway with its featureless tiled floor and identical doors was surprisingly disorienting.

Hal tried one at random—but it opened onto a dim, paneled dining room, far grander than the breakfast room they had used that morning. The tall windows were shuttered, thin gray shafts of light piercing the shadows, and a vast table draped with calico dust sheets stretched the length of the room. Above her head hung two huge shapes swathed in gray that at first, in the darkness, Hal thought were giant wasps’ nests. She ducked reflexively, before her eyes adjusted and she realized they must be chandeliers, encased in some sort of protective covering.