The Door That Led to Where (17 page)

Mrs Furby, along with the other boarders, was in the dining room when AJ burst in.

The Madeira wine was uncorked.

‘Has anyone drunk the wine?' he cried.

He repeated the question again and again and it took a while for him to hear exactly what Slim was saying.

No one had touched the wine because Slim wouldn't let them. ‘You can't just go drinking stuff when you don't know where it comes from. And the cork looked a bit dodgy.'

AJ hugged him and collapsed on the carpet.

He woke to find himself in bed and Mrs Renwick staring down at him declaring that he had a fever and that the doctor should be sent for as a matter of urgency.

‘In my humble opinion,' she said, ‘he needs to be bled.'

‘No, no,' he said. ‘All I need is sleep.'

Mrs Renwick agreed that sleep would be very sensible indeed and insisted that he took one of her remedies at least.

Slim ushered Mrs Renwick from the room. Leon stood at the end of the bed.

‘I would say your leg's infected,' he said. ‘You need to go to hospital and have your dressings changed. And I don't mean here.'

‘No way. Absolutely no way,' said AJ. ‘Do you think I'm leaving now? Come on, bro, help me. When this is done, then I'll go back, I promise. I have to see Ingleby and tell him about mad Mrs Meacock. And I need to find out who murdered my father.'

‘All right, calm it.' Leon sat down beside AJ. ‘I think I've worked it out. Mrs Meacock was obsessed by Mr Bramwell. To her he seemed a father figure and lover wrapped in one. Except just like her father and her brother he ultimately rejected her. With the logic of a raving psycho Miss Meacock calmly saw what needed to be done. She'd been a good student and she graduated with flying colours. Not only did she murder Mr Bramwell but she got away with it. Now, regarding your dad. Remember what Samuel Dalton said when he was dying? When he thought he was talking to your grandfather, Old Jobey? Think about it – Mrs Meacock was Dalton's mistress. She would kill the Jobeys to keep his love. And I wouldn't be surprised if she made sure his wife ended her days in a loony bin. Not too tricky – after all, Martha Meacock was an expert in madness.'

AJ tried to get out of bed.

‘I'm going to see Mr Stone now. There's no time to lose.'

Slim came back with Mrs Renwick's remedy.

‘Drink up,' he said.

‘No,' said AJ. ‘I have to  … '

‘Drink up,' said Slim firmly. ‘Listen to me, AJ. You have two friends here who would do anything for you. The word you need to get acquainted with is “delegate”. It means letting other people share the load. Drink, sleep. Mr Flint knows this chemist and we are about to take the wine to him to find out if it's been tampered with. Leon will go to Ingleby and together they'll see Mr Stone. See what I mean? Delegate.'

AJ drank the potion and sank onto the pillows.

He dreamed Mrs Meacock was waiting for him in the shadows. Behind her stood the ghost of Samuel Dalton, blood running from his eyes and from his lips. All that was left of the ground floor of the house in St John Street was the staircase. Mrs Meacock and the ghost walked up it. AJ didn't want to follow them but in nightmares you aren't given those kinds of choices. He saw the car park beneath him and on the landing was a round table at which were seated four figures, each shrouded in white linen. Before them were broken plates, scattered cutlery, wine glasses knocked over, and a magpie walking about, squawking. Mrs Meacock removed the linen cloth from each of the diners, a magic trick revealing the Jobey family dead and decaying. Bare feet hung above the table and he looked up to see a human chandelier. In each of Annie Sorrell's hands was a candle. Horrorstruck, he tried to back away, forgetting there were no walls. He fell over the edge, down into feather blackness.

He woke, grateful for the daylight. The nightmare had convinced him. He would go to St John Street and speak to Mrs Meacock face to face.

‘Mr Jobey,' said Mrs Furby when she saw him in the dining room. ‘You shouldn't be up. Nellie, Nellie, go and fetch Mrs Renwick.'

‘No,' said AJ and he meant it. ‘No, I'm all right. I just need some coffee. Stop fussing, all of you.'

Leon and Slim watched him make a hash of trying to put on his coat.

‘Wait,' said Leon. ‘Don't you want to know what happened when Ingleby and me went to see Mr Stone?'

‘Yes,' said AJ, one arm in his coat.

‘I told Mr Stone all we found out yesterday and he is asking the coroner to have the inquest into Mr Dalton's death reopened until the body of William Bramwell can be exhumed and examined for arsenic poisoning.'

‘Great,' said AJ. ‘But I want to see Mrs Meacock. I want her to tell me herself that she poisoned my family.'

‘AJ, you're delirious,' said Leon. ‘You need to go back – and you know where I mean.'

‘After I've seen Mrs Meacock.'

Slim suggested that the only thing to do was to take him by force to Ingleby's house.

‘Hello?' said AJ. ‘I'm here in the room you know. I can hear what you're saying.'

‘All right. I'll go with him,' said Leon. ‘But she's as mad as a fish, bro – we should be mob-handed. Slim, you'd better find Ingleby and tell him to come to St John Street straight away.'

If it was cold that day or colder than the day before, AJ, warmed by fever, didn't notice. The house at St John Street looked deserted but Leon spotted a vertical beam of light down the edge of the door frame. Someone hadn't properly shut it. He helped AJ up the two stone steps and pushed the door open.

‘Samuel?' called a faint voice from an upstairs room. ‘Is that you, Samuel, my dear one?'

Cautiously, AJ and Leon went up towards the voice.

‘William, my love?' it called again.

As AJ and Leon reached the room from where the voice came, the front door slammed shut and for a moment, just one moment, AJ felt as if the lid of his coffin had been nailed down. On the first-floor landing, light slipped out of what AJ remembered as Mr Dalton's bedroom.

‘Hello?' he called, a tad shakily.

‘Samuel? I'm dying, Samuel. I drank my own medicine just as you told me to. I am going to hell. You said I would.'

The bedchamber was ablaze with candles yet still they were defeated by the gloom. The cold felt thick. He could see his breath wispy in front of him. Most of the furnishings were gone, leaving only the draped four-poster bed where Mr Dalton had died and near the empty grate a footstool and a wooden, hard-backed chair heaped with clothes. AJ thought he had made a mistake, that no one was in the room, until the heap of clothes spoke.

‘Is that you, William? Do you forgive your little Martha?' it said.

There sat a nightmare of a woman, her lips blistered, her eyes sunk into the hollow sockets of her skull, her voice no more than the grating of sandpaper. She looked as near dead as a living person could, her skin puce, stretched tight across her face.

‘Holy shit,' said Leon from the door. ‘She looks as if she's escaped from a horror film.'

She stirred and put out a hand to AJ.

‘Mrs Meacock?' he said, uncertain.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Mrs Meacock as ever was. My eyesight is failing me – is that you, Young Jobey?'

‘Yes, it's me.'

‘Young Jobey, stole the girl, now come to judge me, to send me to the gallows. But I'm not going to hang like Annie Sorrell. No one will see me rise on the rope.

In the street a dog howled.

‘Hear that,' she said. ‘Hell is waiting for me. My enemies gather to watch my suffering, to gloat at my agony. But they won't see me hang, no, they won't see me rise on the rope. Sit, sit beside me.'

Reluctantly AJ pulled up the stool and sat as far away from her as he could.

‘Nearer,' she said.

He moved a little closer.

‘Can you see them?' she asked.

‘Who?'

‘They are all in this chamber. Over there is your father – he stands by the window.'

AJ could see nothing in the flickering candlelight but an empty room.

‘There is Annie Sorrell  …  there Old Jobey  …  there your aunt  …  and there my sweet William who I loved.'

Even with a fever AJ could see nothing.

‘Samuel betrayed me,' she whispered. She licked her lips, her mouth open. ‘He changed his will  …  after he promised me  …  after all I did for him  … ' Mrs Meacock sat back in her chair. A look of terror came over her face. Even Leon was beginning to be spooked out by a room full of nothing.

‘Samuel – he is here too.'

‘Where?' asked AJ.

‘In the bed. He is there, sitting upright  …  he is staring at me. Stop him staring at me, Young Jobey.'

AJ looked at the bed. It was empty. Her hand wildly shot out and grabbed at AJ's coat.

‘He didn't keep his promise to me  …  he altered the will. That man there – he altered the will.'

‘Which man, Mrs Meacock?'

‘Mr Baldwin,' she said. ‘He was the first to arrive today. He has come to see me die. “Dear Mrs Meacock,” he says, “dear Mrs Meacock.” Pompous prick.

‘It is he you should blame for your family's murder. He would have killed you too. I should have let him.'

‘Me? Why?'

‘Why? Why?' she screeched. ‘Mr Baldwin played me for a fool. It was he  …  he who told me Samuel wanted rid of Old Jobey and his son. I loved Samuel so much  …  I bought a magpie  …  in Clerkenwell  …  hired a street urchin to carry the cage  …  it was so easy. Frightened Annie Sorrell witless  …  gave the urchin a sweet for his troubles  …  watched him drown in the Fleet. When she swung at the gallows I told Samuel  …  told him what I'd done for him, the proof of my love. He called me mad. And Mrs Dalton kept the bastard.' Her voice changed to something altogether sweeter. ‘Bring me that box.'

AJ hadn't noticed it before. It was on the floor, a plain wooden box. He handed it to her and she opened it.

‘His papers,' said Mrs Meacock. ‘All for snuffboxes.'

The hollowed-eyed skeleton rose from her chair, laughing.

Leon moved towards her and she dropped the box.

‘Who are you?' she shouted, knocking over a candle. It rolled across the floor, catching on the curtain, which flared up in a screen of flames. AJ thought he saw a man standing in them, his eyes dark, his face like his own. He was smiling at him.

‘Tell him, Mr Baldwin,' rasped Mrs Meacock over the sound of the burning curtains. ‘Tell him what you did. He won't  …  he can't. Mr Baldwin came to dine  …  to change the will  …  he wanted something sweet and salty to give to you. I gave him it in his wine  …  sent him packing with household flour.' She made a sound that crackled at the back of her throat. ‘A slow death  … '

AJ could hear Ingleby's voice and banging on the front door.

‘AJ? We need to get out of here now, bro,' said Leon.

‘The box – take the box,' said AJ.

Leon picked it up and ran down the stairs to let in Ingleby and Slim.

Mrs Meacock rose from her seat, caught hold of a candle and before AJ could stop her she had thrown it on the bed.

‘There, Samuel,' she screamed. ‘See how much I loved you!'

The room was dancing with flames.

‘Don't tell them where we are,' said Mrs Meacock. She clutched hold of AJ's wrist and pulled him towards her. ‘They must not find me, they must not.'

Ingleby stood filling the doorway, Leon and Slim behind him.

‘Leave this to me,' he said.

Mrs Meacock, flames nibbling at her clothes, held tight to AJ. With one mighty push Ingleby freed him. Mrs Meacock fell back into her chair, near engulfed in fire.

Ingleby thew AJ over his shoulder. As they left the burning house Mrs Meacock's voice trailed after them.

In the hall of Mr Ingleby's house the face above the front door peered down at AJ as he sat on a chair holding the box, the smell of singed wool wafting around him. He saw in the shadows Leon and Slim deep in conversation with Ingleby. They hadn't noticed, or perhaps he had imagined, Miss Esme standing beside him, her hand on his shoulder. Her words sounded as if they were coming from the depths of the ocean.

They were talking about him as if he wasn't there.

Leon said, ‘It's simple, I'll take him back.'

‘No,' said Slim. ‘What happens if the feds pick you up? I'll do it.'

AJ struggled to his feet.

‘No one need come with me. I'm perfectly capable of going by myself,' he said and toppled forward, to be caught by Ingleby.

‘We should call a doctor,' Ingleby said.

‘What – and have him lose a leg?' said Leon.

‘Come on,' said Slim. ‘We'd better make a move.'

‘You're not coming with me, bro. I can do it alone.'

Miss Esme suddenly spoke. ‘I will go with Mr Jobey,' she said, ‘and make sure he returns home safely.'

AJ had his hand on the doorknob. Miss Esme was beside him and before he knew it she had pulled the door open. For one moment the alien noise of the twenty-first century clattered into the hall and they stood together on the threshold between the lines of time. Miss Esme stepped over it and AJ followed, closing the door behind them.

Miss Esme stopped and looked around her. A wet afternoon was steadily being overtaken by night.

‘Where are we?'

If ever a question was an elephant then that question was it, thought AJ.

‘In the twenty-first century,' he said. ‘In a car park.'

A car park is a complicated thing to explain to someone who's never seen a car; a derelict car park even more so.

‘Monstrous metal and an orchestra of unknown sounds. This is a strange new world indeed,' she said. ‘The door has gone.'

AJ knew he should be her guide but the trouble was he hadn't the strength to climb over the car park fence. He hoped that someone might come in through the gate and he would be able to sneak them both out. Unfortunately his leg wasn't in on the plan and even with Esme's help he fell over twice and thought he had dropped the box only to find Esme holding it as she might a shield. He became aware of a dog barking, blue lights flashing – again – and electronic noise exploding around him. Where's the drama, he thought, what's on fire?

Esme put her hands to her ears.

‘Is all the world as broken and destroyed as this?' she said.

AJ was definitely losing the plot. It slowly dawned in his befuddled mind that the lights, the dogs and the police might all be there for another reason.

‘Stay put, you two,' said a voice attached to the end of a torch that was shining straight at him. ‘You're under arrest.'

‘It's all right,' said AJ to Esme as the policeman clapped handcuffs on him.

He heard Esme say, ‘Take your hands off me, sir! You are not a gentleman.'

Then AJ lost his grip on the here and now completely and everything fizzed round the edge of his vision into blackout.

He came to, aware only of an oblong lozenge of light glaring down at him from the ceiling of a windowless cubicle. A nurse was folding his clothes.

‘Where am I?' said AJ.

A doctor walked in.

‘Royal London A&E,' she said, picking up the chart from the end of his bed. ‘How're you feeling?'

‘Odd. Slightly time-worn,' said AJ.

Then he remembered in a lightning flash: Esme.

‘My friend. I was with a friend,' he said desperately. ‘A girl. Is she here? Where is she?'

‘Can you tell me your name?' said the doctor.

‘AJ  …  Aiden Jobey.'

‘Do you have any relatives we can contact?'

AJ gave Elsie's number.

‘Where's my friend?' he asked again. ‘Her name's Esme.'

Had he been hallucinating? Had he imagined that Esme had come through the door with him?

‘A girl,' he said again. ‘A girl called Esme was with me.'

The doctor went away and came back with a tray of needles.

‘Why didn't you keep your hospital appointment, Aiden?' she asked. ‘The wound in your leg is infected.'

‘I was busy.' AJ could see that didn't go down too well. He corrected himself. ‘I lost track of time. Please – could you find out where Esme is?'

‘It's been a long night,' said the doctor.

She stuck the butterfly needle in the back of his hand and put up a drip.

‘Have you been to a fancy dress party?' asked the doctor.

‘Yes,' said AJ.

At least that explained the clothes.

‘Where was this party?'

She didn't look at him, seeming more concerned with the health of his chart.

‘I can't remember.'

‘Have you taken any drugs?'

‘No.'

‘Are you on any medication?'

‘No.'

‘Have you been drinking?'

‘No, no, no. Just tell me – where is Esme?