Spider Light(114)
In the end, it was seventeen minutes before she dared lift the pillow, and her wrists were starting to ache quite badly with the pressure. But it was all right. He was definitely dead: his lips were swollen, and blue-looking, and his eyes were wide and staring. Maud steeled herself to feel for a heartbeat just to be sure, but there was nothing.
She left the pillow on the bed, went along to her old bedroom and put several things into a small valise. Night things, a change of linen. Hairbrush, toothbrush, soap. Carrying the valise, she went back down the stairs. Her father had always kept a reasonable amount of money in his desk, and Maud needed money for what lay ahead. She had a little jewellery, some of it her mother’s, but most of it was at Quire House and she did not dare go back there.
There was almost ￡200 in the desk, which was very gratifying. Maud tucked it into her pocket, and went out through the back door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Maud knew she needed a good deal of resolve for what now lay ahead. She would have to do several things she had not done before, but she thought she could manage it. The main thing to remember was the address she had found that day in Thomasina’s desk–the address that had been tucked into a drawer, rather than being in Thomasina’s proper address book. Number 17, Paradise Yard, Seven Dials, London. And a name: Catherine Kendal.
Maud could see now that Thomasina meant Catherine Kendal to be kept secret, partly because the address was not in her proper address book, but also because of what Higgins had said in the bath-house at Latchkill about Thomasina: ‘One of her pretty little sluts from Seven Dials.’ Maud had instantly remembered Catherine Kendal and the Seven Dials address, and what Thomasina had said that day: ‘There’s a girl who lives in a poor part of London. She’s had to do some dreadful things to avoid starving, and she has a sick sister. She’d do anything in the world for that sister…’
Maud set off along the lanes. It was a quarter past midnight–a lonely time to be out, but she was unlikely to meet anyone. She needed to get to Chester where she could get a train to London. If she could walk as far as one of the small market towns–Barrow or Tarporley–there were little country trains. Milk trains usually ran around four a.m. and Maud did not mind travelling into Chester on a milk train.
It would be a very long walk to Barrow but she did not mind that either. She knew the way because she had quite often been there for shopping, and there were signposts and milestones. She would have little rests on the grass at the side of the road as she went.
If she had to, she was going to say she was a parlourmaid, dismissed because the son of the house had forced his way into her bedroom. Or was that a bit too much like a penny novelette? Perhaps she could say she was going to see her mother who had been taken ill. Yes, that would be better; it would get people’s sympathy. And if she had to give her name to anyone on her journey, she was going to say it was Catherine Kendal and that she lived in London.
Catherine Kendal, with that Seven Dials address. Catherine Kendal was one of Thomasina’s pretty little sluts, who would do anything to avoid starving. And who, Thomasina had said, was exactly Maud’s own age, exactly Maud’s own age…
It was easier than she had dared hope. There was indeed a milk train from Barrow, and the incurious train driver had said, Oh, yes, he was going to Chester all right, so hop in miss, and help yourself to a drink of milk from that churn while you’re about it. And she had hopped in and once at Chester had managed to get on a train bound for London.
It was a long journey, and as the train bumped and jolted along, Maud slipped in and out of sleep. Sometimes the tapping of the train wheels got mixed up with Thomasina and Simon relentlessly tapping on the walls of Twygrist–those sounds were fainter by this time, but Maud could still hear them. But sometimes the wheels sounded like the running feet of the man who had chased her and mamma through that long-ago autumn morning. Heavy menacing footsteps they had been, and when Maud looked fearfully back over her shoulder, she saw the man clearly. She had seen his face, which had been huge and misshapen, and she had seen that he was grinning with delight because he had been sure he would catch them.
Maud still did not entirely understand about that last morning with mamma. ‘We’re going to the place where your father lives,’ mamma had said, and the place they had gone to had been Latchkill. Had the man who followed them really been Maud’s father? Maud thought she had forgotten about him, but drowsing in the stuffy train, with the rhythmic hum of the wheels going on and on in her ears, she found she remembered him very clearly indeed. She could hear him pounding after them through the misty half-light, and she could feel the heaviness of his tread. Exactly like a giant running after a poor little human. Was that why she had thought of Thomasina as a giant on the night she had hidden in Charity Cottage when Thomasina had come striding across the park to catch her?
London, when she reached it in the early afternoon, was bewildering. Maud had been there twice, but once had been a school trip when they had all been taken to the Tower of London, and the other had been with the cousins she had stayed with after her mother died. One of the older cousins had been getting married and they had all gone to Debenham & Freebody to buy bridesmaids’ clothes. Still, it meant she knew about the ladies’ room at the station, where she had a wash and brush-up, and about the buffet, where she had hot coffee and fresh rolls. She knew, as well, about hailing a cab when she got out of the station.