The Lying Tongue (39 page)
Authors: Andrew Wilson
I retraced my steps, lowering myself gently down the staircase, and edged along the portego and back through the bedroom to the study. Crace lay there, his skin now a ghostly white, the blood around him beginning to darken. I stepped over the debris and found my torch nestling by the desk. I picked it up, wiped it as if it was covered in blood or the fingerprints of a guilty man, and made my way back up to the empty floor.
I shone the torch into the darkness, illuminating nothing except for bare walls, cracked plaster and dirt. As the light hit the far corner by the window overlooking the canal, I heard a scuttling sound, the noise of rats running to safety. I walked forward into the emptiness, feeling the brush of spiderwebs on my face, scanning the room for the book. Then something seemed to glint above me. I raised my torch to the ceiling and saw an elaborate octagon of gold leaf, still luminescent despite the buildup of years of grime, surrounded by what looked like folds of decaying skin and the disembodied heads of dozens of baby boys. I stepped backward, unsettled and confused by what I had just seen, and as I did so, I fell over something on the floor. I dropped my torch and suddenly found myself encased in blackness. The memory of what had happened in Dorset flashed into my mind. The velvet darkness. The sharp edges of the rock in the palm of my hand. Lavinia’s bloodied face, her skin studded with jewels of glass.
I heard the rats, suddenly liberated by the lack of light, scuttle across the floor toward me. I scrambled around in the dust, stretching out into the darkness to find my torch. I reached out and felt something. It was moving.
I kicked out in the direction of the rat. As I did so, I felt something near my feet. I stretched my hand out slowly, fearful that I might touch one of the creatures again, and pushed my way through a mass of powdery dirt. I felt something cylindrical. It was my torch. I picked it up and shone it over the surface of the floor. The rats dispersed quickly into the dark corners of the room, which looked more like a vast underground tomb than a former living space situated at the top of a grand palazzo. As the torch light pierced through the gloom, I spotted something on the floor. I eased myself up, another wave of nausea threatening to consume me. I bit on my lip and pushed myself forward. I realized, as I got closer, that the object was a book. I picked it up. It was
Coryat’s Crudities.
The satisfaction I felt on finding the volume was erased by an overwhelming sense of dread. For a moment I considered dropping the book on the floor, leaving it to decay among the filth and the rats, and escaping the palazzo before it was too late, but I realized that this was impossible. I had to know. I had to find Crace’s manuscript.
As I hobbled back toward the staircase, I shone the torch onto the ceiling. The sight that had unsettled me—the seemingly infinite number of babies’ heads—was actually nothing more than an old stucco velarium, the decoration formed to make it look like a vast piece of fabric supported by winged male infants. I took a deep breath and limped toward the door. Slowly, I descended the stairs, each step sending stabs of pain up my leg.
At the bottom of the staircase I brushed the dust from my body and sat down. I opened the book. Sandwiched between two of the leaf-thin pages was another note, this time a much longer one. Again, it was written in Crace’s spidery handwriting.
Dear Adam,
First of all, thank you for what you have done. It’s a blessed release. Life had lost all its sparkle, and I’ve been thinking how best to go for quite some time. Suicide always strikes me as a little banal, don’t you think?
Murder, however, is a lot more interesting. If you forgive the bad joke, there’s nothing like going out with a bang.
I must also congratulate you on your resourcefulness, which is, frankly, much more than I had ever expected from you. What a sleuth you’ve been to get this far, to find this letter. You are really quite the little detective, aren’t you? Who would have thought you could unearth so much about me? But I suppose some of your methods are, how shall I say it, a little unconventional.
Unfortunately, you were not clever enough, my dear boy. I became aware of your little “project” soon after you moved in here. Did you really think I could be that blind? I knew about those letters, the ones from Lavinia Maddon and Shaw, a long time before you even set foot in this palazzo. They were a little test for you, one that I’m sorry to say you failed. And as for all those silly stunts, such as the one when you tried to get the key for the letter box from me, well, I don’t know what you must have been thinking. I may be old, my eyesight is not
what it was, but I am far from stupid. Of course, I was terribly disappointed in you, extremely angry, and even considered getting rid of you. But then I thought, why not have a little fun with you instead? And how could I dismiss you, you who reminded me so much of my golden boy, Chris?
The first time I saw you, when you came to deliver your letter, I thought a ghost had emerged from the canals to haunt me. That or I was going mad. I had to make sure. And when you came for the interview, there was no mistaking it. The similarity was just too striking to ignore and so, as I told you, I had to get rid of the boy I had previously employed.
He did not, however, come back to demand money from me. That was a little poetic license on my part. I simply threw the Francesco de’ Lodovici onto the floor, stamped on it with my shoe and cut my hands with the glass. Of course it hurt a little, but it was nothing but a few surface grazes. And all that with my back—when you had to help me undress and bathe—well, it was just an elaborate put-on, one I must say I rather enjoyed. In fact, the whole thing has been a sham, including my nightmare.
Did you really think I could find you attractive in any way? You are a pretty boy, you certainly do look like him, but you’re not that special and certainly not in the same league as Chris. There’s something about your personality that’s a little odd; let’s just leave it at that, shall we? However, I must congratulate you on the way you dispensed with the enterprising Ms. Maddon. You know my opinion of biographers. I’d say she got her just deserts, wouldn’t you? But if you want to make it as a real novelist, I have two pieces of advice for you. One: you’re going to have to learn how to be a lot more observant. I didn’t take those sleeping pills that you gave me tonight. In fact, I’ve never really needed them. I pretended to swallow them, and when you left me alone I wrapped them in a little piece of loo paper and flushed them away. Two: if you ever go on a trip to the shops or the post office again (which I very much doubt you’ll be doing, at least in the near future), make sure to hide your notebook in a place where peeking eyes can’t find it. Oh, and if you do insist on fashioning a hiding place under the floor, you must make an effort to check it more regularly.
It’s a shame, as we could have had such a happy future together if you hadn’t started on your so-called biography. But having said that, I don’t regret a thing. I think it’s all turned out for the best, as they say.
For the record, I want you to know one thing. Despite what you might have heard from Levenson, I loved all those boys at the school in my own way. But my relationship with Chris didn’t start out like that. He was different from the others. There was no need to persuade him. In fact, he was the one who initiated it. He loved me you see, loved me like none of the others could have.
There’s no need to tell you that his death destroyed me. I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of telling you exactly how it affected me, but let’s just say I was never the same again. Of course, after I discovered what had happened I couldn’t publish the book. In fact, I couldn’t stand the sight of it, so I burnt it. As I watched
the pages disappear into the flames and turn to ash I felt a sense of purging, a punishment, if you like. Subsequently, I found I couldn’t write a thing. Not a word. That’s what guilt does, you see, as you may soon find out yourself.
Now I’m afraid you’ve got to do a little more work if you want to find the manuscript that you are looking for. Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. Think about it.
Yours,
Gordon Crace
The note fell from my hands onto the floor. I felt weak, drained of energy, near to fainting. The bastard, the fucking bastard. Feeling the rage rise within me, I stretched out my arm and pulled off the pictures from the walls of the portego, smashing the glass of the etchings and breaking the frames. I stumbled into the drawing room and threw a table light into the mirror above the fireplace. I saw myself shattered into a thousand pieces. I picked up one of the books lying on the floor and tore it apart, sending the pages flying into the air. I wrenched an oil painting from the wall and punched my hand through its canvas. I moved into the kitchen and turned over the table and threw a chair against the window. As the glass cracked, I felt the wind from outside whip around the room. I hobbled across the portego into Crace’s bedroom. I pulled down the curtains from his bed, knocked over his bedside table and ripped apart his pillows, sending feathers cascading through the air. I couldn’t bear to see the Madonna looking so serenely down at me. I forced the painting down from the wall and smashed it over my knee.
By the time I reached the study, I was exhausted, my anger almost spent. I saw Crace’s pathetic form lying on the floor, and although I wanted to beat him into a pulp, I felt tears running down my face. I dropped to my knees and sobbed over his body, images and snatches of conversation from our months together playing through my mind. I’m not sure how long I stayed there by his corpse, but as I came to my senses one question continued to worm its way through my mind. If he really had destroyed
The Music Teacher,
what manuscript was he talking about? Also, I couldn’t forget the last line of Crace’s note. Was he referring to my own situation with Eliza or the fictional one I had created and read to him? Was Crace telling me to look for the answer to the clue inside my own notebook?
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I dragged myself out of the study and back to my bedroom. I picked up my journal, feeling sick at the sight of it, despising every word I had written. I resisted the urge to tear out every page and flicked to the entries where I had written about my relationship with Eliza and then to the sketch about Richard and his growing obsession with his ex-girlfriend, Emma. I read through the accounts, the one real, the other fictional, but I couldn’t find anything. What a waste of fucking time the whole thing had been! But just as I was about to throw the notebook across the room, I remembered something Crace had said to me. I turned the pages back to the beginning of the journal, where I had written about tricking Crace into giving me the key to the letter box. As we had walked down to the courtyard, he had gestured toward the cupid that stood on the top of the Corinthian column and said that comment about how love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.
I pushed myself upward and out down the corridor. I weaved my way past the shards of glass, the broken canvases and the splintered frames and through the portego to the top of the stairs. I stepped outside into the rain, the night sky still illuminated by flashes of lightning. I eased myself down the stairs, using the metal banister as a support, and toward the statue. Attached to its head by a large elastic band was a plastic bag. I saw an image of Lavinia, her head bloodied. I was back there, on that dark night. I had just killed her, the feel of the rock smashing into her head still fresh in the memory of my skin. I had placed the bag over her head so as not to get the blood on my clothes. I had turned around, but when I looked back, shining the torch in her direction, her lips were still moving underneath the surface of the plastic, making a series of silent, unknowable words.
I stood there in the courtyard, letting the rain wash down my face and over my body, stinging the scratches that covered my skin. I hoped the water would cleanse me of my sins, help me forget the past. It didn’t. I grabbed the package, snapping the elastic band, and made my way back up the stairs into the portego. Even though I was soaking, I didn’t wait to dry myself. I tore through the bag to find another envelope. I took out the short note, now splattered with drops of water from my hands and face, and read it.
Dear Adam,
My, you were observant, weren’t you? Did you write down everything I said? I feel honored you found me of such interest. I hope I haven’t disappointed you in any way.
Now, just one last thing before I leave you to your thoughts. You’ll find a copy of the book hidden on my corpse. It will be nice for me to think of you touching me even after my death. And you never know—you may actually find that you enjoy it.
Contrary to what you might think, I have been quite busy. I did most of the writing at night in bed, scribbling away in an old notebook. The copying out was rather a bore, and I only just managed to finish it. But I didn’t want to leave without providing you with a little reading matter; after all, where I suspect you are going, you might need something to alleviate the boredom.
Hopefully the material is so strong that my publishers won’t mind the primitive method of presentation. I gave the book to Lucia to post when you were out. So, you see, she did come in useful after all.
I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done. Your help has been invaluable. I think you’ll find you make a fascinating character.
Good-bye,
Gordon Crace