Deceit (16 page)

But Robert wasn’t letting go. The knife was still pressed in hard under Micky’s ribcage.

“Let her go, Robert. We don’t need to hurt her.”

Claire could hear the rising note of panic in Lindsay’s voice. She could see Lindsay was in turmoil. She’d accepted that kidnapping children was necessary, but to murder a child in cold
blood… she must realise now how Robert had deceived her?

“
We?
I don’t think so, Lindsay. The spells and the casket are
mine
. Why are you so bothered about this little girl anyway? What’s so important about
her
?”

Claire could see Lindsay’s hand creeping up towards the knife, but Robert was too busy looking at Claire now. “This is your last chance. I will recite my 20 spells and then you will open it. Do it or Micky dies.”

Claire had started to get up from the bed and Lindsay, seeing that all Robert’s focus was now on Claire, made a lunge for the knife and grasped it by the blade. In a flash Robert pulled the knife sharply from Lindsay’s hand and she cried out with the pain and shock of it.

There was blood everywhere. Claire quickly leaped towards Robert and tried to pull Micky from him. But he wasn’t planning on letting go. Micky was struggling and kicking and biting Robert now too. And just as it looked as if his grip on Micky was loosening, he plunged the knife deep in under her ribs.

There was a horrible gasping gurgling sound.
Micky’s eyes rolled up into her head and her body went limp. Claire was so shocked she just stood there, looking. She couldn’t move a muscle now. It was as if liquid concrete was flowing over her body, suffocating her, imprisoning her. In her head she was leaping on Robert and her hands were around his neck and she was trying to squeeze the life out of him. But she couldn’t make herself do
anything
. And now it was too late.

Robert pulled out the knife and Micky’s body fell from his arms and folded down onto the floor. Lindsay was breathing hard now. Her face had turned a waxy yellow colour beneath her make-up. Her cut hand was dripping blood and soaking up into her shirtsleeve; she was staring in horror at Micky’s dead body.

Claire heard something filling the room. A horrible unearthly wailing that seemed to be coming out of her own mouth, as she knelt on the floor and pulled Micky’s limp body towards her… as she struggled to turn her sister over so she could look into her face. “Micky, Micky, Micky,” as her hands frantically patted her sister’s face, willing her not to be dead. As she breathed blue dust into her sister’s open mouth. “Please let there
be enough. Please let there be enough.” Micky stayed limp and lifeless.

A loud, grunting, scuffling noise made Claire’s head jerk up. Lindsay was fighting Robert for the knife now, but Robert was managing to keep her at arm’s length. “Don’t even think of it,” he said, “I will kill you.”

Lindsay was taking no notice. She looked focused and determined. Her good hand shot out and held his wrist and squeezed it hard, her long, sharp fingernails digging mercilessly into his wrist. Robert tried, but he couldn’t stop his fist from unclenching and the knife fell from his hand and dropped to the floor. Lindsay kicked it away. But with a great roar of anger and frustration, Robert’s hands were around Lindsay’s neck, his thumbs pressing into her windpipe and he was squeezing the life out of her.

Claire had a flashback to the moment Robert had tried to strangle
her
at Darke House. The sound of his voice, soft and insistent, whispering her name and filling up her head.

Lindsay’s body crumpled at the knees and dropped to the floor. Robert nudged her with his foot and when she made a choking noise, he went
to press his foot down savagely across her neck.

“No!”

Robert looked startled and he swivelled round to look at Claire. She was clasping the casket to her chest now. “No you mustn’t. The killing has to stop now. I’ll open the casket. You can have whatever you want.” She must keep him talking until the sun came up and it was too late to say the spells and open the casket… keep him at bay for one more day at least, maybe give the police time to find them.

“Why do you want to save her when she deceived you?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “Why?”

“Because it’s wrong to take
anyone’s
life.” She was looking down at Micky lying on the floor, her little face peaceful as if she were just asleep.

But Claire could see that
Lindsay
was still alive. A stuttering rasping noise was coming from her mouth as she struggled to breath.

“She,” Robert looked down at Lindsay and Claire half expected he would spit on her he was so angry, “is weak. Her love for me made her so.” Then he looked straight at Claire. “I used her and now I have no need of her. She’s not the one
true daughter. She’s not my daughter at all! She may as well be dead.” His gaze fell away from Claire’s. He was twisting and twisting the diamond ring on his finger. His jaw was clenched tight.

Out of the corner of her eye, Claire noticed Lindsay’s hand twitch.

“So you never cared about her then? Not one little bit?” Claire hoped Lindsay could hear this so she would know how badly Robert had used her.

“No. I only ever cared for Margrat. And look what came of that… she left me. She went off with that rope-walker… that
boy
. She kept my daughter from me. No,” he was getting very agitated now, “love makes you weak. It makes you vulnerable!”

Claire steeled herself. She had to distract Robert and hope it would give Lindsay time to reach the knife and use it. So she took a deep breath and reached up and put her arms around him.

The smell of him that close made her head reel, but she willed herself to stay there. His body tensed at her touch. Then she felt the tension begin to fall away from him. His hand came up and she felt it resting hot and heavy on her head.

“Claire,” he said, lifting her chin and looking
down into her eyes, “I will say the spells and then you must open the casket. We can use its power to…” Then his eyes widened in shock and his body jerked forward and he stumbled against her as Lindsay reared up behind him and plunged the knife between his shoulder blades.

His fingers scrabbled back, groping for the knife, but Lindsay was too quick for him. She had already pulled it out and was about to stab him again.

Robert made a last desperate attempt to hold onto Claire and the casket, but Claire leaped away from him. Unbalanced, he slipped and fell down hard on the floor, cracking his head and losing consciousness.
Now
, Claire thought,
is my chance to put an end to this wickedness for ever.

Claire saw the pain in Robert’s eyes when he woke and found that he had been bound and gagged using rope from the deck. And there was fear too as he realised that the sun was up and the spells had not been recited. He’d lost a great deal of blood and now death was snapping hard at his heels and could not be stopped.
I ought to feel some pity for him
, Claire thought,
because I am his flesh
and blood. But I don’t, because he has never shown pity to anyone else, ever, in the whole of his long life.

Lindsay was kneeling down beside Micky, rocking backwards and forwards as she stroked her hair back from her forehead. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t mean for you to die. He promised no one would get hurt…”

“I’m going to open the casket now, Lindsay, okay?” Claire had placed it on the dressing table and now she was pressing the ring into the lock.

A second’s pause… and the lid sprang open. A tornado of blue dust rose up out of the casket and spun straight towards Robert. Swirling, suffocating dust that choked the life out of him. Winnowed his flesh and bones to ash before they became just a faint grey mist that hung in the air for a moment and then was gone.

Now the blue dust was a shimmering cloud spinning about Claire. And with every breath she took in, the dust entered her lungs.

Claire knelt down beside Micky and blew out one glittering blue breath and Micky was enveloped in it. An eternity seemed to pass but then Micky’s eyes flew open, she sat bolt upright and, with her
first sharp intake of breath, the blue dust swirled back up and into the casket again and the lid snapped shut.

Poor Micky, suddenly remembering what had happened and, in a panic, pulling up her
blood-stained
T-shirt. Oh! No knife wound… just soft, pale, unmarked skin.

Micky started to cry and reached for Claire. “I thought…” jerky sobs were wracking her thin little body… “Oh I had such a horrible dream. I thought Robert had stabbed me and I was dead. I was dead and floating up and up. Then a cloud of blue dust sparkled and glittered and made me feel happy and I floated back down again.”

“Well you’re not dead. It’s okay. Robert tried to stab you, but Lindsay stopped him.
She
saved you. And now he’s gone. He’s gone for ever.” Claire looked across at Lindsay, slumped down from exhaustion and pain, her back resting against the wall. It was the truth wasn’t it? Because if Lindsay hadn’t helped her defeat Robert… well things would have turned out quite differently.

Claire knew that Micky mustn’t find out the whole truth of what had happened, because how would she make sense of it? There was no need
for her to know that she
had
died. Lindsay would keep her mouth shut. They would say that Robert had been stabbed and then he’d escaped from the barge, slipped over the side, into the water… she’d tell the police he’d taken the casket with him. There was no reason why they shouldn’t believe her…

“What about Robert?” It was as if Micky knew what Claire had been thinking. “Where is he?” Micky pulled herself free from Claire and was frantically looking around.

“He’s gone for good. It’s going to be all right now,” Claire said truthfully, “I’m going to call the police and then we’re going home.”

But she didn’t have to call anyone, because out of the porthole she could see a river police boat was already pulling in alongside the barge. And there would probably be more. How on earth had they known where to find them? Then Claire saw that Jacalyn was there, standing on the prow of one of the boats, with Dan beside her.

“Are you ready?” Claire pushed open the cabin door and, shouldering her backpack with the casket safely inside, she gestured for Lindsay to go up on deck first.

Claire followed, her arm protectively around Micky’s shoulders. Cautiously calling out, “It’s Micky and Claire and Lindsay. It’s okay. We’re okay. Don’t shoot. We’re coming out.”

The next day, the day of Christophe’s funeral, I am awake early and as I start to sit up in bed, I am seized with a terrible feeling of nausea. I reach the basin by the window and heave and heave and heave until there is nothing left in my stomach. The noise wakes Martha and she silently comes across to hold my forehead and rub my back. When I have finished she helps me back onto the bed, wipes my mouth with a handkerchief and fetches me some wine to drink.

We sit in silence for a little while, each of us guarding our own thoughts. Then she says, “You were sick in the morning when you were first carrying Jeanne and…” I nod my head. The first three months carrying my first child, my stillborn son, had been miserable too. “And it is possible that…?”

I colour up. “I thought that if you had a child still at the breast then you could not conceive another.”

Martha smiles ruefully. “Tell that to my mother. There are just fourteen months between my two youngest sisters.”

I ought not to be happy at the thought that I am carrying another child. I can barely look after myself and Jeanne. How will I manage with another baby? But I
am
happy, for it will be Christophe’s child. And what influence can Nicholas have over the birth of this one? I cannot be sure… and so I will pray that it is a girl child. Then a part of Christophe will be at large in the world again.

There are six of us at the funeral… Annie, Luc and baby Tomas. Martha, me and Jeanne. Not forgetting the priest, for it is a Catholic service… which makes me feel like a traitor to my own religion. But I step back and let my mind rise above it. I think of Christophe and let the words of the service wash over me while my heart speaks directly to God.

And so it is that Christophe is buried; his grave marked only with a carved wooden cross that bears
his name and the date of his death. If only I could have buried him alongside his father in Montmorency. Perhaps one day, when Nicholas has given up his quest for me, Jeanne and the 21st spell… perhaps then father and son can be reunited.

I say this to Martha as we walk back ‘home’ to my little room and she answers sharply, “Hell will freeze over before Nicholas gives up looking for you…”

She does not mean to be cruel and she quickly says that she is sorry, that it was a thoughtless thing to say. But she only speaks what is true. I know that in my heart. He will never give up looking for me. And another unbearable truth begins gradually to dawn on me: Jeanne will never be safe while she is with me.

Now that Christophe is buried we must leave Paris. I hear Martha telling me as much. But it is as though her words come from a very long way away. And with every moment that passes, I am travelling further from Martha… and from Jeanne. I still feed her, though she will be weaned soon. Martha places her in my arms and I can feel her suckle. But now I have faced the unbearable
truth that we must separate, I cannot look at her. It is as if I must distance myself from her little by little, so that when it is time for us to part, I will not feel it so desperately.

Martha’s voice chatters on. I sense she is worried and anxious, but I cannot bring myself to care about it. I feel numb and cold at the thought of what I must do. Then she takes me by the shoulders and shakes me hard and her face and my face are only a hand’s width apart.

“I have to go out,” she is saying. “Luc says I can sell the silver I took from the Doctor’s house, on the Rue de Rivoli. No one will ask any awkward questions. I will take Jeanne with me so you can rest.” She hesitates. She does not want to leave me, and when I feel her take Jeanne from my arms and when I hear the door close… for just a second I want to call out, to rush after her. But I clench my fists so my nails dig hard into the palms of my hands. The pain distracts me and I breathe in deeply and am calm again… though my hand still shakes a little as I take my ring from around my neck where it has been threaded next to Christophe’s, and place it on the pillow. Martha will find it and she will know to keep it safe for Jeanne.