Spider Light(71)

George screwed up his eyes, trying to see better. Could it be Maud? Yes, surely that was the cloak with the hood she sometimes wore. He went plunging back down the stairs, shouting to Sullivan.

‘Are you sure it was Maud?’ demanded Cormac when George had spluttered out what he had seen, and Mrs Minching had come puffing up from the kitchens. ‘Mightn’t it have been Thomasina?’

‘Yes, I am sure it was Maud,’ said George, annoyed at the implication that he could not recognize his own daughter. ‘In any case, it wasn’t tall enough for Miss Thomasina or for your daughter, Sullivan. And no one else is likely to be wandering around the grounds in the dark.’

‘She must have been hiding outside while we were searching the house,’ said Mrs Minching. ‘But where she’d be going at such a time of night beats me.’

‘It beats me as well, but we’ll have to find out,’ said George. He looked at Cormac, not wanting to ask for further help, but was relieved when Sullivan said, ‘We’ll go after her. You stay here, Mrs Minching. Ready, Lincoln?’

‘Of course.’

George dared say Sullivan was used to slinking through the night in pursuit of game, either human or feathered, but he, George, was not. By the time they reached Quire’s gates, he was considerably out of breath and Maud was some way ahead of them. But they had both seen her turn left onto the high road.

‘Then she’s not going towards the town,’ said Cormac softly. ‘Can you see her? In this rain she looks like a wraith.’

‘Do you think she knows we’re coming after her?’


‘If I was by myself I’d say she wouldn’t hear a thing, but you’re clumping along like something with spurs or cloven hoofs and huffing like a grampus, so—God Almighty, will you look where she’s going?’

But George had already seen. Maud was going towards Twygrist.



Twygrist was never a very prepossessing place at the best of times, and late at night with the rain sliding from the trees it was as gloomy as it could be. Even George, who had worked there from the days of being Josiah Forrester’s under-manager, always found it forbidding after dark.

Despite Sullivan’s earlier remark, he did not think Maud knew they were here. She walked straight up to the mill, pausing in its shadow to send a stealthy look over her shoulder.

‘Will the door be locked?’ said Cormac softly.

‘It should be. But she won’t go inside.’

‘By the look of it, that’s just what she’s doing. We’ll have to go after her.’

‘Quietly, then. Don’t alarm her.’

Twygrist’s door was not locked after all. Maud pushed it open and was stepping into the yawning blackness as George and Cormac came up the grass-covered slope towards her. She turned, like a cornered animal, one hand going up, although whether in defence or to attack it was impossible to know.

Cormac reached her ahead of George. He took her arm and said, in a voice so gentle that for a moment George wondered who had spoken, ‘Maud–this is a bad old night to be out. Come on home with us now.’

‘You don’t understand.’ Maud sounded quite reasonable and sensible. ‘Don’t you hear it? The tapping on the walls? Listen.’ She clutched at Cormac’s arm, and for a dreadful moment George found himself thinking that there was a faint sound from somewhere inside Twygrist. As if something was tapping feebly against ancient bricks, trying to get out.

‘That’s what you’d do,’ said Maud. ‘You’d keep tapping on the walls until someone heard. Over and over. You’d wear away your flesh, wouldn’t you, but you wouldn’t care, because then you’d have your fingerbones, and bones make good hammers—’

‘Maud, no one has any need to tap on the walls.’

Maud stared at the two men, and then said in a voice that caused an icy hand to clutch at George’s vitals, ‘But if you had been buried alive…’

For a dreadful moment the darkness seemed to swoop down on them, and a brush of wind stirred the shadows around Twygrist. George saw Cormac glance up at the crouching outline of the mill, then he said, ‘Maud, my dear, no one’s buried alive.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Maud. ‘Oh yes, they’re buried alive. They’re both in there.’ For a moment her face–the features George had always thought so pretty–sharpened, and became sly and furtive, and a deep memory stirred in him. He thought: that is exactly how her mother used to look sometimes.

To quench this image, he said, ‘Maud, you’re not well. I’m taking you home.’

‘No!’ It came out on a scream, splintering the night, and when George tried to take her arm, she pushed him away. ‘I must stay here until the tapping stops,’ said Maud. ‘That’s why I came out here, you see. To make sure. Because how long would you take to die–do you know? Hours? Days? Down there in the dark, hammering at the walls to get out.’ She began to sob, and the sobs took on a shrillness, and then built up to dreadful piercing cries that splintered the night. Despite himself George glanced uneasily up and down the deserted road, because the hour was not so very late, and if anyone should come along…

It was Cormac who pulled out the silver flask, and said, in a sharp firm voice, ‘Maud, your father is right and you’re unwell. Drink this now for me–Oh yes, you will, there’s to be no argument about it. And then we’ll walk along to Toft House.’