The Sin Eater(77)
‘We heard a cry from Flossie’s room,’ said Declan.
‘Maybe your man with the bowler hat and the moustache tried to steal her virtue. I passed him in the drive, and he was running away as if hell’s devils were chasing him.’
‘Catch him stealing anyone’s virtue,’ said Cerise derisively. ‘He ain’t got the wherewithal to steal anyone’s anything, or not so’s you’d notice.’
Colm smiled, but even in the shadowy hall Declan had the strong impression that there was something very wrong about him. He said, ‘Oh, leave her to sleep it off,’ and turned back to the stairs. As the light from the hall lamp fell across his face a cold hand seemed to twist in Declan’s stomach. Colm’s eyes, his vivid blue eyes, were suffused with a dense blackness, as if some inner darkness had bled out of his brain and stained the pupils.
Cerise saw it as well, but her reaction was very different. She said, sharply, ‘Colm Rourke, you been in an opium den. And don’t lie, I can see it. It’s your eyes.’ She tapped her own. ‘Black as the devil’s forehead. Like the eyes of a giant insect. Can’t mistake it. Rot your brain, it will. I knew a sailor once – took opium for years, got the taste for it in China, he did. He died in screaming fear of something nobody else could see.’
Declan could not, for the moment, give this accusation any real attention. He said, ‘Are we opening this door or not?’
‘Yes, but keep Shanghai Charlie out of the way, for I never knew a man come out of an opium den and be use or ornament for the rest of the day.’
She pushed open the door. As it swung back Declan felt as if something had slammed into the base of his throat, because it was like looking into the black core of a nightmare and it was Bluebeard’s chamber after all . . .
Flossie Totteridge lay on her back, awkwardly sprawled across a table, her hair hanging down from its pinnings. Her eyes were wide open and staring, and her lips were stretched wide – still shaped in the scream Declan had heard earlier. There was a stench of blood on the air. Like tin, thought Declan, and felt sick.
Directly beneath the silent screaming lips was what seemed to be a second mouth – a gaping glistening grin. Even from where he stood, Declan could see the glint of white in that macabre unnatural grin. There were slivers of bone, sinews . . . Sickness welled up from his stomach, but he went on looking at the nightmare. In another minute he would have to step into it – he would have to play a part in it although he had no idea yet what part that would have to be. But he thought, oh God, it’s the same as that poor wretch Bullfinch, lying on the river steps. The murderer had gone away that time, leaving the rain to wash clean the stench of the blood, but this time there was no rain and the stench filled up the room. And this time the murderer had not gone away. He was standing next to Declan.
Somehow they got through the next few hours. The other girls came in at intervals, and there were shrieks of horror as the news reached them, then sobbing for ‘poor old Floss, silly old bitch, never did no one any ’arm, din’t deserve this’.
Colm and Declan worked out their story before they were questioned.
‘We say we were together when it happened,’ said Colm. ‘We certainly don’t tell them I was out of the house at the time, for they’ll ask where I was, and I can’t say I was getting rid of a wallet belonging to another murder victim.’ Somehow he managed to make this bizarre statement sound entirely reasonable.
‘Both of you went downstairs when you heard the cry, is that right?’ said the police constable, a short time later.
‘I got there first,’ said Declan.
‘I was a few minutes after him.’
‘And you were on your own in the house, apart from Miss Cerise.’ The policeman was slow of speech and portly of build, and was, in fact, the Walter Oliphant to whom Cerise had referred. ‘I’ve got her statement.’
‘The other girls were out at the time,’ said Colm, ‘but I think they’re all back now.’
‘I know they’re back,’ said Constable Oliphant, with considerable feeling. ‘I’ve got them penned up in their rooms, and they’re carrying on like one o’clock, sayin’ deceased ’ad been like a mother to them.’ He closed his notebook, and said the inspector would want to talk to Mr Rourke and Mr Doyle, but for the moment they were to remain where they were, was that clear?
‘It is. Could we get a cup of tea while we wait, though?’ said Colm. ‘For I have a powerful thirst and it’s been a long time since breakfast.’
Constable Oliphant saw no reason to deny this modest request; in fact he saw no reason why everyone in the house should not have a cup of tea. It might even, he said, plodding off to find a suitable female to set a kettle to boil, serve to shut up the wailing females.
By the time the tea had been made and a tray of mugs carried in to the wailing damsels (who demanded it be laced with gin to counteract the shock), the inspector had arrived and Colm was Colm again, his eyes normal. He was polite and articulate. Asked their reason for being in the house, he said he and Declan were renting a bed for a night or two.
‘And we’d be glad if you wouldn’t tell our families over in Ireland, for they’d be horrified to learn we have a cousin running a bawdy house. Well, we were horrified ourselves, weren’t we, Declan? Shocked to our toes, the both of us.’