Property of a Lady(88)

He was seated behind the desk when I came down the steps, and he stared at me, his mouth in a round O of surprise. I didn’t hesitate. I had brought with me what I believe is called, among street ruffians, a sandbag – a receptacle filled with ordinary garden soil. I had taken a silk bag from my wife’s sewing table (she did have one or two ladylike pursuits) and filled it with the soil from around the old apple tree. There is a drawstring at the top – I pulled this tight and fashioned a loop.

Crutchley started out of his chair when I entered, demanding to know what I was doing there, but I gave him no opportunity to say any more. I swung the bag high above my shoulder and let its own weight carry it straight towards his head. It struck him squarely on the temple, and he went down like a poleaxed bull.

I believe I stood staring down at him for quite a long time and – this is a curious thing – it was as if something stood with me. Something that approved of what I had done, something that nodded a scaly head and patted me with a fleshless hand, and huffed foetid breath into my face as it leaned forward to whisper, ‘Well done . . . Oh, well done . . .’

The devil, they say, likes murder very much – not that I’m imagining the devil has condescended to stroll into this very ordinary workshop and insinuate himself down the stairs to this room. But there’s something here, for all that . . .

I’ve managed to drag Crutchley’s body back to the chair behind the desk and prop it upright. He has no heartbeat – I’m quite sure he’s dead. I shall have to read the journal, of course – it’s almost certain he will have recorded seeing me kill Elizabeth.

Dare I take the journal back to Mallow to read? No, it’s too much of a risk. It could be seen – there are callers to the house. The vicar from St Paul’s has been twice already, and there will be people from Brank Asylum, to talk about Elvira.

Elvira . . . She went so obediently into that place. I could wish she had resisted and cried, but she did not. She sat in a corner of the room as I talked to the doctors, her big dark eyes fixed on me. Delusional, I said. Given to fits of hysterical rage. At such times I can’t control her – she bites and screams and sees nightmare figures while awake.

‘Nightmare figures?’ said the doctor.

‘Men wrapped in black cloaks she believes mean her harm – although she can’t describe what that harm could be.’ I had thought very carefully about this beforehand – it seemed to me that this was more believable, more sinister, than the traditional child’s terrors of giants and witches.

They agreed to keep her with them for a few days to see if some form of calming treatment could be given. For the moment that will have to suffice, although I will have to think of some better solution. The memories were starting to come back to Elvira, and I can’t risk her telling people she saw me kill her mother, I cannot . . .

It’s two o’clock, and for now I shall return home. But tomorrow night I shall come back here, very late, and sit in this room and read Crutchley’s outpourings. If there is anything damning in them, I shall burn them in the stove above this room.





29th November


So. So Crutchley knew it all. More, he caused it. For if he had not crept out to Mallow that night with his stupid superstitions and the repulsive lump of graveyard flesh . . . Well, perhaps Elizabeth would still be alive and I should not be a haunted man, going in fear of discovery. The irony is that he could have had her, just as any man could have had her. She was not discriminating, the harlot.

He still sits where I left him last night, stiffening in death’s grotesque pose, his eyes wide open and staring at nothing. Or are they? Aren’t they staring at me? Just as Elvira’s eyes do . . .

Elvira. Spawn of God-knows what pot boy or stable lad.

I can’t bear Crutchley’s dead eyes watching me. I have walked round this room and swung quickly round to take them by surprise, and each time they are fixed on me. Something still lives behind those dead eyes . . .

In Crutchley’s workshop upstairs are a number of tools for the fashioning of intricate clock mechanisms – I saw them while I hid there, waiting for him. Tiny, sharp-ended implements they are – miniature chisels and screwdrivers. Among them are several long needles . . .

It was easier than I expected.

When I return tomorrow to finish reading the journals and destroy them, the man will no longer stare at me with that condemnation and knowledge. He will no longer be able to stare at anyone or anything, for he no longer has any eyes. He will have to feel his way through eternity.

Tomorrow afternoon I must go out to Brank Asylum. They will allow me to see Elvira – they will leave me alone with her. She will stare at me with those accusing eyes – silent and condemning, just as Crutchley’s did. I don’t think I can bear that.

But I still have the long needle in my pocket . . .





TWENTY-EIGHT




Nell and Michael came up out of the last years of the nineteenth century with difficulty. The journal ended with William Lee’s avowal to visit Elvira.

‘But afterwards he never went back to the underground room,’ said Michael, eventually. The room had been silent for so long that the sound of his voice was slightly startling.

‘He couldn’t,’ said Nell. ‘Look at the date on the last entry. The twenty-ninth of November. And according to that newspaper article he was arrested on the thirtieth. He had no chance to go back.’