The Sin Eater(82)
When he entered the room at the far end, he had an impression of extreme fear, and so strong was it, he almost went straight out again. There were several large packing cases, and an old-fashioned dressing table with a swing mirror stood against the wall. Was that where Benedict had glimpsed that sinister reflection that had lodged in his mind? It would not be difficult to believe a figure stood in the smoky depths, watching you.
But the room looked perfectly normal, even though the fear hung in the air like clotted strings. Pushed against one wall was a small bureau with a drop-front flap and a chair pulled up to it, and Michael sat down and tried to decide what to do. Would Benedict or Nina know where Nell was? He did not have their phone numbers, but they were probably on Nell’s phone or written in the Filofax. Michael was not sure if this was a situation where he could intrude on her privacy to that extent. Was there anywhere else she might be? Had she found something in the house that had sent her hotfoot out of the house? Where, though? And would she leave the house unlocked and her jacket and phone and Filofax behind?
How about the chess set? If Benedict’s story could be believed, the rest of the figures had perished in the watchtower fire that had killed Sheehan, so Nell could not have found the rest of the set. But might she have found out something about its origins? Paperwork? A letter? On this thought, Michael began to sort through the desk, tipping out the contents of the envelopes. But they seemed to contain only old household accounts, yellowing notepaper with Holly Lodge’s address, and bills from local merchants. No, wait, there were a couple of old photographs. He seized on them. One was a group shot, the grainy, sepia tones of the nineteenth century, the faces of the people indistinct and the background blurred. On the back, in faded, slightly childish-looking writing, were the words ‘My friends in Kilglenn.’
Kilglenn. That edge-of-Ireland place near the stormy Cliffs of Moher, with an old watchtower where Nicholas Sheehan and Colm Rourke had played chess . . .
The other photo was clearer and looked as if it had been taken by a professional photographer. It was a posed shot of two people, head and shoulders, both very young, barely out of their teens. The man was dark-haired, and he wore the faintly embarrassed amusement of any Victorian gentleman faced with a camera. The girl came up to his shoulder. She was even younger and she had an air of fragility and innocence, but there was something in the slant of her eyes and the curve of her lips that suggested she might be capable of being very far from innocent. Her hair fell to her shoulders.
The edges of the photograph were indented with parallel lines, as if it had been in a frame for many years and the frame or the glass had cut into the paper. Michael turned it over. On the back, in a different hand to the one on the group picture, it said, ‘Colm and Romilly, taken at his eighteenth birthday.’
Colm, thought Michael. Colm Rourke, Declan’s closest friend, the boy who played that fatal game of chess with Nicholas Sheehan. And Romilly, the copper-haired waif, who sobbed out a tale of seduction or rape, but looked out of the corners of her eyes as she did so, to see what effect her story was having.
Benedict was not suffering from multiple personality disorder at all. Those people he had talked about so vividly had existed – which implied the events he had described had happened. Two Irish boys had come to London, to find Colm’s cousin and seek their fortunes. They must have seen it as a fairy story – a romantic adventure. Two heroes travelling to the city whose streets were paved with gold, going to the aid of the beautiful Romilly.
And which version of Romilly’s story was true? Had the enigmatic Nicholas Sheehan, being lonely – even perhaps influenced by the chessmen’s malevolence – really seduced her that day? Or was Sheehan’s own story the truth: that Romilly had demanded money to prevent her spreading a rape story? Had she been so desperate to leave Kilglenn she had done that? And had Sheehan, desperate to preserve the chessmen’s solitude, yielded to her blackmail? Michael supposed he would never know the truth, but remembering portions of Benedict’s story, thought he would not put blackmail past Romilly.
He tidied the photos back into their envelope. The fact that these people had existed was something good to tell Benedict – unless, of course, he had seen these photos for himself and folded them into his fantasies. But none of it got Michael any nearer to finding Nell.
He checked the desk again. Had he looked in all the pigeonholes and envelopes? No, there was one with yellowing newspaper cuttings. They were not likely to be relevant, but Michael was not ignoring anything.
The cuttings dated from the late 1890s, and described a series of murders committed in Canning Town by a killer the press of the day had dubbed the Mesmer Murderer. Benedict had not mentioned a murderer as being part of Declan’s story, but this had been Declan’s house and someone living here had wanted to preserve these articles. Michael began to read the top article. It described how the murderer had been caught, but how, on his way to face justice, had escaped. The hue and cry had been raised, and the hunt was still on. A photograph, apparently taken by an enterprising reporter with an early camera, was reproduced.
Michael unfolded the rest of the cutting and stared down at the photograph. It was smudgy but it was recognizable. Allowing for the few years’ difference, the face of the Mesmer Murderer was the one in the photograph he had found earlier in this desk. Colm Rourke.
So the shining fairy-tale adventure of those two boys had turned to the poisoned fruit of so many fairy stories. The golden pavements had been dirty and unfriendly; the heroine had sold her purity for a mess of pottage and had died a sad squalid death in a slum. And one of the heroes had been branded as a multiple murderer.