The Spider, page 7
“I’m not sure I have any other choice, Mr—Trevor, sorry. My mother is convinced there’s something in the house with us and to be perfectly honest, I think I am, also.”
Trevor Kingsley leaned back in the chair, seeming pleased with Frances’ answer. “Very well,” the old man said as Fred brought more chairs to the card table they were sitting at. “Now, can you tell me who’s taking part and who’s in the house?”
“Myself and my mother are joining you and Fred. Elsie, my daughter, she will be in bed. Sarah, her nanny, will be in the house but I don’t think she wants to join in with this. Other than that, there’s Mrs Mckinnon, my housekeeper and Maggie, my maid. They’ll be in their quarters, I imagine.”
“Is there a chance I could speak to Sarah and the little’un before we do the seance? It helps paint a picture, so to speak.”
Frances agreed. “They will have dinner with us. We can speak then.”
At dinner, Elsie was cherubic in her demeanour and, knowing that sitting at the dinner table was a rare treat, made a keen effort to charm the company. The affable Trevor Kingsley was taken with the little girl as she told him all about her dolls and her favourite games. Frances, although prepared for the conversation, felt herself overcome with nausea every time Mary was mentioned. Fred, observing her discomfort, poured her some water. “Children are masterful at creating imaginary friends, aren’t they?” Fred said quietly as Elsie spoke to Trevor Kingsley.
“Oh yes, they are,” she said, thanking him for the water. She sipped it nervously.
“I had an imaginary friend, when I was little,” said Sarah. “Another little girl. I think her name was Rachel. Did you have one, ma’am?”
“No, no I didn’t. At least, I don’t remember one.”
“Mine was a dog,” Fred said, sipping his wine. “My mother wouldn’t let me have one of my own, so I made one up.”
Frances and Sarah laughed at Fred’s confession. “His name was Barney,” he said wistfully, resting his chin on his hand.
“What happened to him?” asked Frances.
Fred shook his head, “I don’t very much know. I think I simply grew up.”
“Perhaps it was a ghost,” Beatrice said, slicing some cheese. “We could be seeing them all the time, for all we know.”
“Indeed,” he agreed. “Though I should think the spirits of animals are unlikely.”
Beatrice turned her face toward Fred and frowned. “Why would you say that?” she asked in a lowered voice, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve heard of plenty of ghost stories concerning farmhouses and manors where packs of dogs can be heard howling in the night, leaving their muddy paw prints everywhere, all while the living ones are asleep at the foot of their masters' beds.”
Frances shuddered. “Don’t say that, mother. You know I’ll have trouble sleeping.”
“Trouble sleeping about what?” enquired Trevor Kingsley over his shoulder.
“Nothing,” Fred said. “Nothing that the little one should be in earshot of, anyway.”
After seeing Elsie to bed and giving her a goodnight kiss, Frances entered the landing and closed the nursery door behind her. Sarah didn’t know what Beatrice had said about the sightings in her room, and it seemed Elsie hadn’t told her either. Frances sighed with relief but a knot of fear still sat within her core, squeezing her insides as she breathed. “It’s bloody well nothing, Frances,” she tried to tell herself, hearing John’s voice in her head. I’m a madwoman. What the hell are we doing? I shall write him and mention this bizarre evening. I’m sure he’ll find it entertaining, if nothing else.
She giddily descended the staircase, taking no notice of the flickering sconces as she passed them. She arrived in the tiled hallway to see that everybody else had gone into the drawing room. Leaning closer to the door, Frances could hear the clinking of glasses and rolled her eyes: Beatrice was entertaining.
She opened the door and found the room almost unrecognisable with the closed curtains and tablecloth that Mr Kingsley had brought. “Ready when you are, cocker,” he said with a wink. He gestured to one of the still empty chairs. “Mind the candles.”
There were what seemed like hundreds of them, glowing with a fierce, yellow haze around the room.
Beatrice was the last to be seated, having lit the final candle for the seance. “There,” she said, proudly. “All ready for you now, Trevor.”
Mr Kingsley nodded and cleared his throat. “Everyone here wants to take part, yes?” he asked.
Sarah, although intrigued by the prospect of a seance, had bowed out earlier and remained upstairs with Elsie. “Probably for the best. I wouldn’t want to know about being watched in my sleep either,” Beatrice had said. “Best she doesn’t know anything.”
“We’re all here, Mr K—Trevor,” said Frances, wincing. The room, darkened by the closure of dense curtains and glaring candlelight, felt heavy with anticipation. Frances sensed her heart beating violently as she looked around the room. The candles, at first glowing and fierce, had reduced to a subdued flicker, as though there was a draught that had narrowly missed the blockade of curtains.
“Very well. Now, everybody needs to hold on to the glass here.” Mr Kingsley pointed to the tumbler that Frances had assumed was for Beatrice’s happy hour and smirked. “Don’t let go of the glass, even if it moves. The glass will be moving around to these letters here.” Everyone looked across the board at the letters as Mr Kingsley set the tumbler face down. Frances took a deep breath. She didn’t want to know who Mary was, or the other man. She wanted everyone and everything to go away, but instead, she placed her finger on the glass. Fred, Beatrice and Mr Kingsley followed.
“If there is anyone present tonight, please tell us," commanded Mr Kingsley in a booming, clear voice. Frances, deafened by the sound of her own breath, waited with the group in silence, staring at the tumbler. Hours seemed to pass by as they waited. “If Mary is here. Please give us a sign.”
Frances felt the tug of the glass before she saw it. Their hands were carefully guided to the Y, the E and the S. “Yes. Mary is here,” Mr Kingsley said, half to the room and half to himself. He looked at Frances and gave a gentle, encouraging nod.
“Did you die here, Mary?” Frances flushed red at hearing her own question. Of course she bloody died. “I mean…” her mind emptied within seconds as her eyes met those of another woman across the table. Sitting between Fred and Beatrice was the woman she had seen in the mirror. Beatrice inhaled a sharp breath as the glass dragged across the letters Y, E and S again.
Frances allowed the glass to move her hand but she could not take her eyes off the pallid face belonging to the figure sitting opposite her. “Mary,” she tried to say, locking the apparition in her gaze. “M-m,” she tried again. She thought of the throat, the blood and the scream as the others waited in silence for something else to happen. They couldn’t see the ghost in the room.
“Frances, what is it?” Beatrice asked with a furrowed brow. “Frances? Frances? Speak to me!”
Mary’s eyes, darkened around the lids, were wide and frightened. She opened her mouth and screamed.
Before Frances could blink, she felt the tumbler rumbling under her finger, vibrating with tension until it shattered. Beatrice yelped and covered her face as the tiny pieces of the tumbler scattered across the table. When she looked up, Frances was still staring at a space beside her, as though in a trance. She rushed over to her daughter and placed her hands on her shoulders. “Frances, what’s wrong? Frances? Please speak to me! Trevor! What do I do?” She gave Frances another shake. “What do I do?”
“Leave her, Beatrice. She’ll come to in a moment.” Mr Kingsley slowly removed Beatrice from her daughter and stood back. “Mary, can you hear us?” he asked, looking about the room.
To Beatrice’s relief, Frances closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “She’s here in the room with us,” she said.
Part II
14
Autumn in the city had been wet, laden with fog and a still, damp chill that settled in the bone by evening. From the tall red chimneys of the factories, the smoke rose, poisoning mother nature’s sweet breath and staining it with hues of yellow, grey and black. Down on the river, horns blasted as ships rolled in, waiting impatiently for the dockers to unload. The air was thick with the scent of tobacco and burning coal, sinking into the street with a dense, ominous smog. Hordes of dockers and ragged children shuffled down toward the factories and warehouses, barely looking up as they walked.
Further up the hill, amidst the bustle of bankers and traders heading to their respective places of work, a small urchin weaved his way through overcoats, shoes and trams, missing some of them by a hair. Like a shadow, the boy was gone within a blink, appearing again on the far side of the perilous cobbled street. Some days, he’d stay closer to the crowds and see what he could find in their pockets, but today he was on a mission. Dodging horse droppings, cigarette butts and the trample of boots, eight-year-old Paulie McRae could have impersonated a phantom, he was so swift. No informant had ever been so masterful at such a young age.
Waiting for the boy on a quiet corner of the street was Inspector Daniel Muldoon, his breath rising before him in wisps of white cloud. He chewed his tobacco pensively, watching for the boy to reappear. His hands were firmly settled in his pockets as he looked out at the rows of sad, brick buildings that occupied his line of sight. When the boy had successfully crossed the street, Muldoon greeted him with a solemn nod. “You ought to get yourself some new shoes, Paulie,” he said, looking down at the boy’s filthy, bare feet on the pavement.
“Last time I had shoes, me da beat me. He says he needs all me slummy.” The boy handed him a scrap of paper. Muldoon eyed him up and down and noticed the threadbare shirt, torn trousers that he’d long outgrown and shuddered. Winter would be cold.
Muldoon took the note from the boy and began to open it. “What’s he needing the money for?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow.
The boy shrugged. Muldoon turned his head and spat the tobacco out onto the damp pavement. Drink, no doubt, he thought, but he said nothing and instead read the note. The boy watched the detective’s face with a keen anticipation, as though he was going to read it out to the illiterate child in the manner of a bedtime story.
“Thanks, Paulie. Now get yourself some shoes and don’t wear them where your da can see, you hear me?” He tossed a shilling to the boy, who jumped up and caught it gratefully like a circus monkey.
“Thanks Dooney,” he said, smiling with scattered teeth that seemed too large for his head. Dooney. They were friends now. Muldoon watched him skip off and disappear within the throng of passers-by before he turned away and began to stroll up to Cheapside.
Standing out on the hill like a warning to all would-be-miscreants was The Main Bridewell. Muldoon felt that the small, slit windows watched like narrowed eyes in the face of an unsmiling, hostile guardsman. Inside, the corridors of the main bridewell were gloomy and seemingly endless, but luckily for Muldoon, he never had to visit more than one room in the building.
Waiting for him in the Police Chief Inspector’s office was his unofficial employer, Andrew Gill. Gill had just finished speaking to a young constable in a manner Muldoon and many others recognised as ‘the skinning’. Whoever this lad was, he’d made a fool of himself and Muldoon guessed he had caught the tail end of the reckoning on his way down. Knowing better than to be caught eavesdropping on Gill, he stood back from the door as he heard heavy footsteps approaching. It swung open with a loud shriek and out came a gangly young man in uniform, no older than twenty. His face still held some childlike roundness, but his cheeks were flushed crimson as though Gill had given each one a hard slap. The constable in question, upon seeing Muldoon in the corridor, concealed his embarrassment with a sneer and muttered “mick” under his breath as he passed.
“Now now, son,” Muldoon said quietly. “We all have a little Irish in us. Just ask your ma.”
The young man, predictably cocky and hot-blooded, leapt into Muldoon’s trap like a bated bear. Just as he was about to lunge at the grinning Irishman, Gill blocked him with his large, stout frame. “That’s enough. Lacey,” he growled, “now sling yer hook. You’ve got real work to do or you’re out.” He brought his face closer to that of the young constable’s. “If I hear one more word–”, he wagged a fat finger, “one more word! I’ll be posting those big bollocks to your mother. Now get lost.”
Constable Lacey, knowing that the purple-skinned glower of Andrew Gill was not to be challenged, lowered his head and slunk away down the echoey corridor. “Mulders, come in and close the door,” Gill barked over his shoulder. Muldoon followed him into the large, almost-bare office where Gill gestured for him to sit down as he remained standing, lighting his pipe. He angrily puffed once or twice and pulled it away from his mouth.
“Young and stupid. Can’t work with ‘em, can’t work without ‘em. Good legs for catching robbers but God they’re stupid.” He blew out some smoke and furiously puffed again.
If Muldoon had ever wondered what a bulldog smoking a pipe looked like, he had to look no further than Chief Inspector Gill across the desk for an accurate picture. He smirked. “I’m sorry I missed it.”
Gill was calming down. Muldoon recognised the decrease in effort in Gill’s smoke inhalation and the drawing out of the exhales. “Go on then,” Gill sighed, “our cellar bodies?” Tobacco smoke seeped out of his nostrils as he waited for an answer.
“Human, sir.”
“Christ,” Gill said, looking up at the ceiling. “Just what we need.” He shook his head and slapped a large hand down onto the desk. “Even the barrel of babies?”
Muldoon drew a deep breath. “Even the barrel of babies,” he said regretfully. “I’m afraid the pickled bodies are the work of a…” he reached into his pocket for the scrap of paper again and opened it, “Glyn and Fisher,” he said. “Both William. Should be easy. They drink in The Corner House on Scotland Road—all the time, actually. I’d be drinking too, mind. They’ve been sending the corpses to Edinburgh to a surgeon there, who’s using an alias. But you’ll love this—John Smith is his real name, would you believe? I’m sure a flying squad can sort it. The address is overleaf.”
“Body snatching. Makes me sick,” Gill hissed, scowling into oblivion.
“Easy work if you can get it. The workhouse doesn’t check who’s buying, they just want rid… these fellas are making a mint. Ten pounds a corpse, allegedly.” He slid the note across the desk, where Gill grabbed it and inspected it with his head cocked to one side.
“You’re sure? John Smith is a surgeon?”
“Yes.”
“Damn. I was sure this one was one for you.” Gill, in his twenty years of policing, had been noticeably horrified by the case. “Poor young Robertson found them. I tried to console him with the old ‘a man couldn’t have done this,’ talk. Turns out I’m wrong. I’m bloody wrong. Christ.”
“Aye, well, sometimes man surprises you.” Muldoon shrugged and looked about the room at the peeling wallpaper and rotting wood frames of the tall, filthy office windows and wondered how much longer he’d have to stay in the miserable bridewell. Every time he came in, he felt he’d entered a maze. He hated it. In the courtyard downstairs, he could hear the iron doors unbolting as prisoners were sent out for daily exercise. A football slammed against an outside wall, rattling the thinly paned window, shocking his consciousness back into the room where Gill was marching to the window swinging his arms in fury. “I told ye no fucking balls!” he bellowed into the courtyard with a slight waver that only Muldoon could hear. His order was immediately followed by the blow of a whistle and the faint arguing between some male voices below. “Those do-gooders say they need exercise. I say fuck off and let me do my job,” he said, still at the window. Muldoon said nothing and sat back, watching.
Judging by the way he hung his head on the way back to his seat, Gill seemed devastated. “All right, but God it’s a bad one. You can see why I thought…?” He drew some more smoke from his pipe and blew a plume of grey clouds into the room via his nostrils and waved a hand dismissively. “Well there’s something else that might interest you anyway. I don’t think it’s one for us.” He rested the pipe in the corner of his mouth and leaned over the desk, his large body towering over Muldoon. “Do you have many dealings with ghosts, Mulders?”
“Not really,” he shrugged. “They’re usually harmless. Who’s ever been killed by a ghost?” He shrugged again with a half laugh. “Demons, sure, I’ll take a look. Ghosts, though?”
Gill was less than impressed with Muldoon’s dismissive tone. A deeply superstitious man, Andrew Gill did not enjoy ghost stories, nor did he partake in making light of them. He tried again. “What about possessions? Exorcisms, that kind of thing?”
“I’m no priest, sir. Anyway, I didn’t think you’d be needing my services much longer.”
“Why’s that?”
“I told you, I don’t deal with general crime. You know that, Gov.” He wasn’t sure why he called Gill, Gov. It was just what they were used to. “And I’m no priest.”
“No,” Gill felt himself becoming annoyed with his slippery contractor, “but you are a Catholic and your kind deal with… all that.”
“All that?”
“Yes, Mulders. Weird shit. You deal with weird shit, and there’s been a lot of it knocking around. I can’t afford to let you go just yet.”
Daniel Muldoon, lead detective: weird shit, he thought, looking up at Gill who was still thinking.
“Look,” he said, sitting down in his seat, finally. “This is a sensitive case I’ve got. I’ve had a woman here, a Mrs Mckinnon. She says she’s concerned for the welfare of her mistress, who hasn’t been the same since they had a little seance and the bloody thing went tits up.”
