Roots of Evil(63)

Lucy found the oil lamp which they used in power cuts, or if plumbers came up here to do something called lag-the-pipes, and which would give pretty good light. There were matches at the lamp’s base, fastened there with a rubber band – she was not really supposed to use matches but she knew how the oil lamp worked and she would be careful. She struck a match, and set it to the part of the lamp that was called the wick. There was a glass funnel thing that you had to slide down over the flame so that it would not burn anything.

The lamp made splashy yellow puddles of light, which Lucy liked. She set it against one wall, and thought she would see what was stored under the slopy bit of roof at the far end. She was just crawling across to a boxful of old photographs – old photographs were the best things of all up here – when there was a sound from beyond the attic door. Lucy looked round, because it sounded exactly as if someone had come up the twisty stairs, and was creeping very quietly across the tiny landing outside. It might be part of Mum’s game, although Mum had said nobody would come up to the second floor – there was only Lucy’s bedroom there, and the rest of the house was plenty big enough for the guests. They would put a little notice up at the foot of the second-floor stairs saying not to go up there, so Lucy could feel quite safe in going off to sleep as usual.

Probably whoever was out there was just somebody who had not seen the notice. Or perhaps the notice had fallen off. Lucy was not exactly frightened, but this was starting to feel a bit scary. The oil lamp was still burning, but she had closed the attic door, and she thought whoever was out there would not see it.

And then her heart bumped with fear, because the door was being pushed slowly inwards and a shadow had fallen across the dusty floorboards. Lucy could not see who it was; she could only see the shadow, which was huge and oddly-shaped because of the flickering oil lamp. She had thought it would turn out to be Mum or Dad, who had found her room empty and come up to look for her, but neither of them would creep scarily around like this; they would just come inside, calling out to know where she was.

The shadow did not come inside and it did not call out. It just stood there, as if it might be peering around. Lucy stayed absolutely still, praying that she could not be seen, clenching her fists so that the nails dug into the palms of her hands. The big black shadow might be a burglar; you heard about burglars creeping into houses when people were having parties. But burglars did not bother with attics, did they? Attics were just places where people stored rubbish. Lucy was trying to decide if this made her feel better or worse, when the shadow suddenly ducked its head and stepped into the attic. And Lucy saw who it was.

Edmund. Her cousin, Edmund Fane, who was here for the weekend, on account of his father being mad or dying or something. Edmund, with whom she had shared those really good holidays at Aunt Deb’s house, because Aunt Deb loved having them both there; she kept bicycles for them to ride around the village, and there were picnics and nature rambles. Sometimes in the evenings Aunt Deb told Lucy stories about her own youth which Lucy loved, although Edmund always pretended to find them boring.

Why had Edmund come up here in the middle of the party? And why was he looking round the attics and smiling to himself, as if something was pleasing him very much? Lucy began not to like the way Edmund was smiling – it made him look completely different. And then he turned his head and saw her and for a moment the scary, un-Edmund-smile stayed on his face as if it had frozen there. But when he spoke, his voice was quite ordinary.

‘Lucy?’ he said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

He did not sound especially angry and he looked entirely ordinary again, so Lucy scrambled out from under the roof slope and explained about not being able to sleep, and about liking to come up here and look at the old photographs and things. There did not seem any reason to pretend about that, and it was always better to tell the truth. ‘Only I’m not really s’posed to be here on my own, so it’d be good if you didn’t tell anyone.’


‘It’ll be our secret,’ said Edmund. ‘I understand about secrets, you know,’ and for a really dreadful moment the other Edmund came back and looked at Lucy out of Edmund’s eyes. But he only said, ‘I see you’ve lit the oil lamp. That’s a bit silly – you might have started a fire up here.’

The really odd thing was that when Edmund said this about the lamp, Lucy had the feeling that he was not annoyed, but actually very pleased. She mumbled that she had been careful to blow out the match and put the glass funnel in place.

‘So you have. But I’ll turn it out now,’ he said. ‘And then we’d better go back downstairs.’ His hand – a long big-knuckled hand, made bigger and longer because of the flickering light – came out to the lamp. Lucy saw his fingers slide the funnel up so that the little flame was unguarded.

Between one heartbeat and the next – so quickly that Lucy could not see quite how it happened – the lamp tipped over, and a sizzling line of flames ran along the dry floor timbers of the attics, and with a little whoosh of sound a stack of old newspapers, tied with twine, caught fire and blazed up.



Edmund said, ‘Go downstairs at once, Lucy. Now! Tell them what’s happened – tell them to bring buckets of water up. It’s all right,’ he said, as Lucy stared in horror at the tongues of greedy fire. ‘It’s really all right – it’ll be out in minutes. But go and tell people now, while I start stamping this out.’ He grabbed at a pile of old curtains, and moved forward to fling them over the flames.