Mulligan's Yard (39 page)

As all this happened within a matter of seconds, James and Camilla had been powerless. James wiped blood from his face, dabbed at the sore eye, while Camilla, winded, struggled back to her feet.
‘Mother?’ she screamed.

‘Get her out of here,’ snapped Eliza.

Camilla turned on the girl. ‘I know you did it. I know you killed my brother.’

‘You know nothing,’ Eliza replied, her eyes fixed to the woman on the floor.

‘You may have had reason to strike out,’ continued Camilla. ‘Did he attack you? Did he?’

James helped Helen Smythe to her feet, placing her in a small nursing chair just inside the door. Helen, winded and shaken, made no attempt to speak.

‘This is my bedroom,’ said Eliza clearly. ‘A bedroom is a sanctuary, a private place. No-one should ever enter another person’s room without invitation.’ She turned
to Camilla. ‘So take that woman you call Mother away from here, please. And do not come back, ever.’

Camilla, afraid and hurt, gathered up her mother and led her from the room.

Eliza sat at the dressing table and rearranged her disordered hair. ‘It’s a good thing that I can spare some of this,’ she remarked, tossing her head, ‘because that
dreadful woman took enough to make a wig, I’m sure.’

James sank into the chair recently vacated by Helen Smythe. He could not believe his eyes. Here sat Eliza, probably a murderess, certainly a cool customer, preening, applying powder, a dab of
rouge, some lip colour. Her hands were steady as she stroked a pencil across beautifully arched eyebrows, while she coloured in her lips. She was a fascinating piece of work.

She turned and awarded him a brilliant smile. ‘There,’ she said, ‘no lasting damage.’

His tongue seemed to have stuck. What might he say to a creature such as this? How dutiful a daughter she had been, how pretty a pianist, how lovely a sister. ‘What have you done?’
he achieved, after some seconds.

‘What have I done?’ She raised shoulders and hands. ‘Nothing. It was an accident, James. You do believe me, don’t you?’ She fastened an alluring smile to her lips.
‘James, apart from Amy, you know me better than anyone.’ She sidled up to him. ‘We have always been good friends, you and I.’

His feet felt as if they had been riveted to the floor by steel bolts. She looked like a very beautiful film star, one whose acting went into every slow step. ‘You were a good friend to
Sally, if you remember,’ he said. His feet still refused to budge a fraction. ‘But you dropped her when it suited you. The girl was devastated; she worshipped you.’

She stopped moving for a moment. Ah, yes, she had tried to persuade the girl to travel to London with her. ‘Sally is a servant,’ she said now. ‘I tried to help her, but one can
only do so much for the under-educated.’

James inhaled in an effort to keep his fury contained. ‘Sally Hayes is one of the cleverest people I know,’ he said softly. ‘She is an avid reader and not just of
fiction.’

Eliza laughed. ‘Such a philanthropist, James. You even lifted the Hewitts out of the slums.’

‘A worthy trio,’ he replied. How could Eliza remain so cool when, only moments earlier, she had been engaged in a physical fight with a woman at least twice her age? He found his
feet and backed away from her, his hands guiding him through the door and towards the landing. ‘Are you going to push me, too, Eliza?’

She stopped moving, blinked slowly. ‘What?’

‘You pushed Rupert. Will you do the same to me?’

‘Of course not, James. I love you, have loved you for the longest time and,’ she pulled herself up, straightening visibly, ‘I did not kill Rupert Smythe,’ she said
emphatically.

‘Ah.’

‘And what do you mean by “ah”? Am I to take it that you, along with those dreadful Smythe women, believe that I could deliberately take a human life?’

‘Did he attack you?’ James asked.

She inclined her head to one side. ‘He tried several times to kiss me, but I would not allow it. Who knows what his intentions were when he came up to the attic?’

‘If it was self-defence, Eliza, you must inform the police.’

This was incredible. She stood now within a stride of the man of her dreams, and she was losing him. She was gorgeous and she knew it. For as long as she could remember, men had almost fallen at
her feet. Fallen. She blinked again, saw the man’s body tumbling, rolling, crashing. ‘I thought you liked me.’ The words emerged in a childlike tone. ‘You listened to my
playing – I played for you, only for you.’

He watched her closely, saw that her expression changed only slightly as she spoke. ‘What are you, Eliza? For your mother, you were perfect. Then, when she died, you became manipulative,
cold, unfeeling. Or were you like that all the time? Is life a play, a stage where you strut and act out scenes to suit yourself?’

She shook her head slowly. ‘All I wanted was to get out, to go and see the world.’

‘And the world does not want you – is that it?’

Eliza raised her shoulders. ‘I came back because Rupert Smythe died. I could not remain in a house where a friend had died, and I needed the comfort of my family, the safety of my
home.’

‘You need nothing, you need no-one,’ he said.

‘I need you.’

He paused. ‘You could have moved to another house in London.’ Again, he waited. ‘But offers of work did not come in – am I right?’

‘It was early days,’ she answered quickly.

‘Yet you gave up and came home, to a place you despise.’

She blinked again, more quickly this time. ‘I needed to come back to think,’ she said. ‘To think.’

He gazed on her as she retreated into herself, saw the light in her eyes dimming, noticed that the corners of her pretty mouth were now down-turned. She had killed the father of her own niece or
nephew, the lover of her younger sister. At this moment, she resided in a place where none of that had happened . . . No. Amy had been right after all. There was hell on earth and Eliza was a part
of it, was possibly reliving the events that had taken place in London. ‘Eliza?’

She frowned. ‘James?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t you love me?’

He breathed deeply. Standing at the top of a staircase within reach of Eliza Burton-Massey was not a good idea. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I do not love you.’

‘Ah.’ The syllable emerged slowly, as if she had to give great thought to the response. Everyone loved her. She was universally admired and desired. This man could surely be no
exception to the rule? He was playing hard to get, she decided, was trying to make the seduction scenes more interesting.

Well, two could play that game. She brushed past him, failing to notice how he shrank back as she passed. ‘I am going out for a walk,’ she announced to the house in general when she
reached the hallway. ‘I need to clear my head.’

James slid down the wall and crouched at the top of the stairs. She had gone and the air was fresher.

Mary heard the banging just after seven o’clock. Sally was in another part of the house, busy being in charge while Mrs Kenny attended a funeral. With her feet up on the
fireguard, Mary was taking advantage of a day without the sarcastic Irishwoman. She sipped at hot, sweet tea and meandered through a
Bolton Evening News
, her feet and legs warmed by glowing
coals, head propped on a cushion normally reserved for Kate Kenny’s brief spells of respite.

Mary was not best pleased. For a start, her younger brothers had disappeared from the face of the earth and Mam would need an explanation. Then, to add insult to injury, Sally Hayes had been
appointed boss in the absence of the housekeeper. Mary had served months at the Grange before the arrival of madam. Ah, well, let her do it all; Mary had no intention of budging till the man of the
house returned.

When the cellar door rattled, Mary almost shot out of her skin. The person trapped down there had finally managed to escape. It might be a mad creature, she thought, as she dropped the newspaper
and placed a fist against her heart. Perhaps Mr Mulligan had some weird relative down in the cellar, a human who was not quite human, a thing with red eyes, long beard, black stumps for teeth.

For several seconds, she remained glued to her seat. Where was bloody Mulligan? He was the sort of man you could set the clock by, usually home by six, dinner in the kitchen, long chats with Mrs
Kenny, then down to the cellar, up to bed. Mary and Sally always left the two adults alone in the evenings, coming down into the kitchen only to clear up and make a bit of supper for themselves.
Well, his dinner would be dried to nothing tonight . . . the door rattled noisily again.

The trouble with Pendleton Grange was the thickness of the doors. The doors upstairs were not as heavy, but eavesdropping on the ground floor was almost an impossibility. The cellar door was the
most substantial of all, a great heavy thing, inches thick, four long black hinges required to keep it in position. And some poor beggar was trying to get out of the prison below this very
kitchen.

A thought dawned. Harry and Jack had disappeared very suddenly this afternoon and the coal had been delivered. Oh, God. Had they slid down the chute? She stood up and crept across the floor,
placing her ear against solid oak. Had they gone down there? And, if they had, was something torturing them?

Whatever, thought Mary, she was in trouble. Harry and Jack were her brothers, so she could well be blamed for their misadventures. As for whatever lived down there, Mary was afraid to death of
it. She bent to the keyhole. ‘Jack?’ she shouted, in a tremulous whisper.

‘Mary?’

Blood and stomach pills, they were locked in there. ‘Have you found him?’ she whispered again.

‘Who?’

‘The bloody prisoner.’ Shouting in whispers was having a serious effect on Mary’s vocal cords. ‘The one what’s being kept down there.’ She coughed, then
pressed her ear against the hole once more.

‘Just a load of coal,’ answered Jack. ‘All the other rooms is empty and there’s just one locked. We couldn’t hear nobody, neither. We come down through the
coal-hole because you didn’t find no key. And we’re thirsty.’

‘Keep quiet while I think.’

Mary paced about the kitchen. If one of her brothers had fallen down the chute, that might have been accepted as an accident. But both? No, hang on, she told herself. Perhaps the story might
work if one had fallen down the chute and the other had gone to the rescue. Only why hadn’t they shouted to the coalman? Oh, God, what was she going to say?

‘Mary?’ The stage whisper shot out of the keyhole and right across the room.

She returned to the cellar. ‘Shurrup,’ she snapped. ‘Little Orphan Sally’s about and if she hears you my job’ll be took away. You have to wait.’

‘We’re thirsty.’

‘I know. Keep quiet while I think.’

‘Mary – we’ll die!’

She filled a small watering-can at the sink, brought it to the cellar door. ‘Put your mouth against the keyhole.’ She poured. ‘Did you get any?’

‘A bit,’ replied Harry.

Mary spent ten full minutes repeatedly emptying the watering-can through the keyhole and into her brothers’ mouths. Then she ordered them to go away from the door while she had a long
ponder. There had to be another key somewhere. But where? She had searched the kitchen from top to bottom, drawers, cupboards, pots and pans, bread-bins, potato baskets, tea-caddies, flour
containers, fruit boxes, sacks, shopping-bags.

He would come home eventually, would go down the cellar to do whatever he did . . . Mary shot across the kitchen yet again. ‘You there?’

Harry’s voice answered. ‘We’re hungry.’

‘Well, if you think I’m shoving bread and dripping through this here keyhole, you can bloody think again.’ Her brain was in a whirl. ‘Get back down with the coal,’
she ordered. ‘Mr Mulligan’ll be here any minute.’

She waited for a response, ear flattened against wood. ‘There’s a gap,’ said Harry. ‘Only a little ’un, but you could shove summat under it.’

Mary looked up at the ceiling. ‘Jaysus,’ she muttered, in an almost perfect imitation of Kate Kenny. ‘Not one more word,’ she said to the keyhole. ‘I’ll do
what I can, then bugger off away from this door.’

‘Right,’ came the answer.

There followed five or so minutes of frantic activity while Mary cut bread so thin as to be almost transparent. She covered the results with smears of plum jam and posted them beneath the cellar
door. The boys grabbed and pulled, causing bits to break away, while Mary, frantic about the mess, used a dull ham-knife to push crumbs towards her starving siblings. When the two daft beggars got
out of there, she would kill them, she really would.

‘What are you doing?’

Mary swung round to face Sally. ‘I were – I were scraping summat up off the floor,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know where it come from, like.’

Sally was not amused. She was worried about Mr Mulligan, who was seldom as late as this. ‘I might go down to the cottage,’ she said, ‘to see if he brought Diane and Joe back
home.’

‘Please yourself, Sally.’ Mary spoke loudly, her mouth as near as possible to the keyhole.

‘Stand up,’ advised Sally. ‘I hope you’re not trying to get down there. It’s nothing to do with us, whatever’s in the cellar.’

‘I’m cleaning – I told you.’

Sally looked at the clock, picked up the bread-knife. ‘Have you been eating bread and jam?’

‘Why? Is it a crime?’ Mary sauntered towards the table.

‘You’ve made enough mess.’

‘I’ll see to it.’ The older girl could see that Sally was in a bit of a state. ‘I don’t know why you’re worrying, he’s big enough to look after
himself.’

‘It’s just a feeling,’ mused Sally out loud. ‘As if there’s something wrong. Have you ever had a feeling like that?’

Had she ever? Here stood Mary Whitworth, two daft thirteen-year-old lummox-headed brothers in the cellar with God alone knew what, jam all over her hands, job hanging by a thread. But she wanted
Sally to go out. ‘My mam always says you should follow them feelings,’ she said. ‘They’re called sixth sense.’

‘Yes, I’ve read about that.’ Sally sat down at the table.

Oh, heck, thought Mary. Surely Little Orphan Sally wasn’t going to start being friendly, didn’t intend to kick off with a nice chat while Jack and Harry were just yards away?