The Sin Eater(90)

‘I killed them,’ said Colm. ‘But I couldn’t help it. It was as if another person came sliding under my skin, clawing its way along my hands and fingers and deep into my brain . . . God, would that be what the monks called possession?’

‘I don’t know. But if you are possessed,’ said Declan, ‘we can make a good guess where it came from.’

‘The chess piece,’ said Colm, light showing in his eyes for the first time for several hours. ‘Jesus God, it’s the bloody chess piece Sheehan gave us, isn’t it?’

‘Let’s keep an open mind. You hated them all because of Romilly. The police might see that as good reason for you to kill them.’

‘I see that. What do we do?’ He sounded so frightened and so vulnerable and he looked at Declan with such trust, Declan knew he could not abandon him. He began to outline his plan, which was quite simply for them to leave Holly Lodge now, at once, and head for Liverpool and a boat for America. If they could disappear anywhere, surely they could do so in America. He had got as far as saying they should see how much money they had, when there was a loud hammering on the street door.

‘Police,’ said Colm, and turned white.

‘Even if it is, they can’t possibly have any proof,’ began Declan.

‘They can if they’ve found Flossie’s will,’ said Colm.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Last time I was with her we got a bit drunk,’ said Colm. ‘And she was – uh – very grateful to me. So I said – as a half joke – that it’d be nice to have a material form of her gratitude.’

‘Such as?’ But Declan already knew.

‘She wrote it out there and then, and that girl who scrubs the kitchen came in to add her mark as a witness,’ said Colm. ‘All proper legal phrasing – Floss’s husband was an accountant or something, and she knew how it should be worded. Declan, she’s left me this house. And in the police’s eyes, that’d give me a whopping great motive for killing her.’

‘She left you this whole house?’ said Declan, incredulously.

‘She was drunk,’ said Colm, impatiently. ‘I was drunk, as well. Jesus Christ, wouldn’t any man have to be drunk to get into bed with that one! But it was a joke – I never thought she’d take it seriously.’ Downstairs they could hear the door being flung open, and several pairs of heavy feet trampling through the house. Colm flinched. ‘Get me out of this,’ he said. ‘Declan, please . . .’

Declan dived for the window, wrenching it open. They were on the top floor and it was a sheer drop from the window to the ground. But there was a drainpipe, and if Colm would risk trying to get down it, there might be a chance . . .

But there was no time for any chances to be taken or any risks to be made. The bedroom door was flung open and three police officers came into the room, including the large and stolid Constable Oliphant who had questioned them earlier. He looked at them with bovine recognition, and it was the inspector who spoke the feared words. ‘Colm Rourke, I’m arresting you for the murder of Mrs Florence Totteridge and on suspicion of four other counts of murder . . .’

As they took Colm from the room, he turned a white, desperate face to Declan, and although he did not speak, Declan knew the same thought was in their minds. Somehow, no matter the cost, Colm had to be extricated from this. Because if not, they would hang him.

At first though, he could not see how it could be done. Colm was being held in a police cell; the newspapers were having a fine old time, telling the citizens of London – and, for all Declan knew, the rest of the country as well – how the terrible Mesmer Murderer had been caught. The five murders were described in considerable detail. Declan forced himself to read everything in case he could find something that would lead to Colm being released. Perhaps he would find mention of Colm having done something when he had been indisputably somewhere else. Remembering those eagerly devoured episodes of Sherlock Holmes’ exploits, Declan scoured the newspaper reports, trying to find a chink in the police’s evidence.

The killings were set out in distressing and chronological detail, although none of them mentioned Colm by name – Declan supposed there would be some legal reason for this; perhaps they were not allowed to name the killer prior to the trial. But the victims seemed to be fair game.

Harold Bullfinch had been the first. He had told his landlady he had a business appointment, but his body had later been found knifed to death on river steps near the old Bidder Lane sewer outlet. Declan was wretchedly aware, as the police must be, that Bullfinch was the abortionist responsible for Romilly’s death.

He expected Flossie Totteridge to be listed as the second victim, but it seemed that Mr Arnold Trumbull, a highly respected gentleman who managed a printing company in Islington and was a lay-preacher at his church, had been next.

Trumbull, thought Declan in horror. The little plucked fowl in a waistcoat. The man whose sister gave most of their money to homes for the indigent, and fed her hapless brother on pig’s head and boiled cabbage. The man who had been responsible for Romilly’s fateful pregnancy. So you killed him as well, did you, Colm? he thought, feeling sick.

Colm would hang on only half of this evidence. The judge and the jury would see it as a killing frenzy out of revenge for Romilly.

After Arnold Trumbull had come Flossie Totteridge. The name was not given; the papers merely described her as a widow who took in lodgers. She had been found with her throat cut in her own sitting room in North London. The police would not know Flossie had seen Colm and Declan with Bullfinch’s bloodstained wallet, but they would see it as another piece of Romilly’s story, because Flossie had turned Romilly out of the house for getting pregnant, when she might have helped her.