Roots of Evil(70)

‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’ his father was saying. ‘You won’t ever tell anyone.’

‘No,’ said Edmund slowly. ‘No, I won’t tell anyone. No one outside this room will ever know that you’re a murderer.’

The shadows seemed to creep closer, and to reach out to claw the words and take them into their darkness, and then return them.

You’re-a-murderer…You’re-a-murderer…

‘You’ll be quite safe,’ said Edmund in the same soft voice, and it was only then that the clutching hands loosened their grip, and Crispin Fane fell back on the pillows, exhausted.



Shortly after midnight Crispin seemed to slip into an uneasy slumber, and after a few moments Edmund went out of the room. He had not eaten or drunk anything since midday; he would make himself a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

There was hardly any food in the house, so whatever the doctor had said, he would have to go out tomorrow. He was just grating some rather stale cheese when the floorboards creaked overhead, and he went back out to the stairs. He was halfway up when he saw his father’s outline, pitifully frail in the thin pyjamas, making a slow, fumbling way across the landing. There was a moment when the overhead light turned Crispin Fane’s hair to the shining red-gold it had been in Edmund’s childhood. He waited, and saw his father go into the bathroom at the far end, and close the door.

Nothing wrong with that, said Edmund’s mind. If he feels well enough to walk to the loo on his own, that’s perfectly all right. He went back down to the kitchen, and heard the taps running in the old-fashioned bathroom that his father had never bothered to modernize. After a few moments the tank began to refill. The pipes were slow, clanking things, and the tank always took quite a long time to fill up; when Edmund was very small he used to lie awake listening to it, wondering how the water knew when it had reached the top and had to stop. Sometimes the rushing of the water seemed to go on and on.

It went on and on tonight, almost drowning the single chime from the old carriage clock that had belonged to Edmund’s mother. One a.m. The smallest of the small hours. The murdered walk, his father had said. If that was true, this was surely the hour when they would do so. Who would they be, those murdered ones? The long-ago Conrad Kline, killed by a jealous boy? Mariana Trent and Bruce, screaming as the flames burned their flesh, with the appalling stench of burning human flesh, like meat cooking in an oven filling up the night…But I never meant that to happen, cried Edmund in silent anguish. Yes, but it happened all the same. It was your fault. And that makes you a murderer…

Crispin had been a murderer, as well. He had killed Conrad Kline. But what about the other man – Leo Dreyer? Who had killed him? Had it been Lucretia after all?

The slopping water filling up the tank had died away, and in the silence the ticking of the carriage clock seemed unnaturally loud. Tick-tick…The murdered walk…Crispin had said that, as well. Tick-tick…They walk, they walk…Burned alive or stabbed in the face, they always walk…

He carried his sandwich and the mug of coffee upstairs. His father’s room was still empty, the bedclothes pushed back. Edmund set down the plate and the mug, and went along the landing.

The bathroom door was not locked, but when he called out to know if his father was all right, there was no response. I don’t want to go any further with this, thought Edmund. I truly don’t. But I’ll have to. I’ve called out to him – that’s a reasonable thing to do, isn’t it? He took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The bathroom was full of pale thick vapour, as it always was if someone took a long hot bath and forgot to open the window, and for a moment Edmund could only make out the shapes of the washbasin and the deep old bath and the cloudiness of the misted mirrors. But here and there the mists were tinged with red, like clouds reflecting a vivid sunset.

It was a large bathroom by modern standards: the house had been built at a time when space was not at a premium, and one of the bedrooms had been converted some time before Edmund was born. For a moment he could not see any sign of his father, but then the mistiness cleared a little as the cooler air from the open door began to disperse it. The pulsing fear that had been beating inside him changed key, and began to drum against his temples.

Because there was someone lying in the bath.

There was someone lying absolutely still in the bath, the head turned to the door as if watching for someone or something it would never see again. For the space of six heartbeats the lisping trickle of water still dribbling into the tank whispered all round the room, seeming to mock the confused panic in Edmund’s mind. S-s-someone lying in the bath…S-someone with blood-dabbled hands, and blood-smeared che-s-s-t, and someone who’s grinning through gaping bloodied lips-s-s…

Someone who had deliberately run a hot bath, and then had got into it and was grinning with macabre triumph at having cheated the world. The tiles around the bath were splattered with blood, and there was blood on the damp tiled floor. The razor lay on the tiles.

How am I supposed to interpret what I’m seeing? thought Edmund. I must concentrate, I must work out exactly what I’m looking at, because they’ll want to know – police and doctors, they’ll all want to know. So what am I seeing? I’m seeing that he’s smiling – that’s the first thing. But his mouth’s in the wrong place.