Midnight Is a Lonely Place

by Barbara Erskine

  The creak of the door on the landing made her jump out of her skin. She spun to face it, her heart thundering beneath her ribs. There was someone there; someone hiding in the spare room. Taking a deep breath she glanced round for some kind of a weapon to defend herself with. There was nothing that she could see save a wire coat hanger lying on the chair. Picking it up she held it out in front of her as, white knuckled, she tiptoed to the door. She had not quite shut it and it was easy to creep into position behind it and from there peer round onto the dark landing. She frowned. In the narrow stream of light which fell from her bedroom across the rush mat and up onto the wall on the far side, she could see the door of the other room was still open. The room beyond it lay in darkness. For a moment she was tempted to slam her own door closed and jump into her bed, putting her head under the pillow and praying that whoever it was would go away. But that was impossible.

  ‘Greg?’ Her voice came out as a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Greg? Come on. I know there’s someone there.’ Flinging her own door back against the wall she walked openly onto the landing and pushed open the door opposite. ‘For God’s sake, stop messing about. It’s one o’clock in the morning. Come on. The joke’s over!’ She flicked on the light and peered round. For a moment she was too horrified by what she saw to react.

  Her boxes and cases had been strewn all over the place; Greg’s pictures had been thrown over, the stretchers broken, the canvas slashed and all round the room was a dusting of black earth. The smell of it was overpowering, sweet, rich, cloying. Clutching the door, leaning against it for support she found she had begun to shake; her knees were on the point of giving way. She could feel the bile rising in her throat. Whoever had done this, whoever had been there had wrecked everything in the room. Her eyes strayed to her locked suitcase. It had been torn apart at the hinges. The duster in which the torc had been wrapped was shredded and the pieces lay scattered across the floor. As far as she could see the torc itself had gone.

  ‘Oh God!’ Her lips were dry, her palms wet.

  Turning, she peered down into the darkness of the stairwell.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’ she screamed. She ran down the stairs and flung on the lights in the hall. ‘Where are you?’ The front door was still locked and bolted as she had left it – the key lying in the dish on the hall table. She ran into the living room. It, too was as she had left it, the windows closed. The kitchen was deserted too, save for a cloud of bluebottles which rose as she turned on the light and homed in at once in their endless circling of the ceiling.

  She picked up the phone. It rang for a long time before Diana answered, her voice muzzy with sleep.

  ‘Diana, I’m sorry to ring so late.’ Kate was unaware of how her voice shook. ‘Can I speak to Greg. You warned me. You warned me and I thought I could cope but this is too much. He’s got to come and clear all this up now!’

  ‘Kate, what’s happened?’ Diana, sitting up in bed at the farmhouse reached for the bedside light. Beside her Roger groaned and opened his eyes.

  ‘The place has been smashed up. My cases – his pictures – his own pictures – have been shredded!’ Kate swallowed hard, trying to make herself breathe more slowly; trying to regain a little calm. ‘Please, just tell him to get here!’ She slammed down the phone and turned to survey the kitchen. At first she had thought it was all right – clean – but now she could see that she had missed a patch of earth on the dresser behind a pile of oddments – a kitchen timer, a couple of books, a pen. She stared. A maggot was wriggling across a shopping receipt she had tossed down when she came back from Colchester, its white gelatinous body dotted with grains of fibrous peat. For a moment she thought she was going to vomit where she stood. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the chill of sweat on her face. Slowly she backed away from the dresser. Slamming the door on the kitchen she went to open the stove. She stood over it, holding out her hands, waiting for the sound of the Land Rover. It was a full twenty minutes before she heard the engine and saw the reflection of the headlights through the curtains.

  Her legs were so weak she could hardly reach the front door. Fumbling she inserted the key and pulled back the bolts to let Diana and Roger and Greg into the hall.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Diana put her arm round her. ‘Oh, my dear, what’s happened?’

  ‘Ask him.’ Kate nodded at Greg, ashamed to find she was near to tears.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you think I’ve done,’ Greg retorted sharply. He walked into the living room and peered round. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Upstairs.’ Kate pulled herself together with difficulty. ‘The spare room.’

  She and Diana remained in the hall while Greg ran up the stairs two at a time followed more slowly by his father. For a moment there was silence, then they both heard Greg’s string of expletives.

  ‘Would he really do that?’ Kate asked. ‘Destroy his own paintings?’

  Diana looked at her with a frown. Releasing Kate she climbed up after the men.

  Greg was standing in the middle of the room, one of his canvasses in his hand.

  He spun round as Diana came in closely followed by Kate. ‘Who did this?’ His lips were white.

  ‘I thought you would be able to tell me that,’ Kate retorted. ‘It was your plan, wasn’t it? To scare me witless so that I would leave and you could come back here.’

  ‘Do you think I’d destroy my own paintings?’ He shouted. ‘Do you think I would do this? Christ Almighty! This was one of my best pieces.’

  It was the picture of the cottage under the sea.

  ‘Why did you leave it here then?’ Kate flashed at him. ‘If it was so precious, why not take it with you?’

  ‘Because – because it belonged here.’ He glared at her. ‘Because I had meant to have it framed to hang here.’ He looked down at the torn, bent remnant in his hands.

  ‘Obviously your bully boys got their orders wrong.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’ he shouted. ‘Where have you got this idea from? Ma, I suppose?’

  ‘You can’t deny you meant to scare Kate away,’ Roger put in. ‘I could not believe anything so childish of you when your mother said she thought that was what you were up to. But she was right. I saw it tonight at dinner.’ He leaned against the wall, his hand going surreptitiously to his chest beneath his jacket. His face was grey with exhaustion.

  Greg stroked the painting in his hand with a gentle forefinger. ‘I don’t deny Allie and I were going to have a bit of fun, talking about ghosts and that. It was going to be worth it.’ He flashed a grimly defiant look at Kate. ‘But this – no.’

  ‘Then who did it?’ Kate whispered.

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Vandals?’ Diana took a few steps forward, and stooping, picked up a small sketch which had been torn free of a book which had rested with the paintings against the wall. She looked down at it sadly.

  ‘Vandals would not have contented themselves with one room, surely,’ Kate said. ‘And nothing has been stolen as far as I can see.’ She stopped. The torc. The torc had gone. Unless it was lying with the rest of the rubbish buried somewhere in the debris.

  Roger was watching her face. ‘Is something missing?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe. Something I found on the beach. I had locked it in that suitcase.’

  ‘Something from the dig?’ Greg turned on her accusingly.

  She shrugged. ‘I was going to take it to the museum. I was pretty sure Alison wasn’t going to bother and that site is too important for a child to be playing about destroying what is left of it. I’m sorry, but I really felt that. It was a torc. It was important.’

  She walked into the room and picking up the suitcase tossed it aside, pushing at the drift of papers underneath with her foot. A clot of peaty soil fell off the case at her feet. Something was wriggling about in it. She stared at it for a moment then she turned away.

  ‘Oh God!’ Diana covered her eyes in disgust
.

  ‘I think we’d better call the police.’ Roger sighed. ‘If Greg had nothing to do with this, and I don’t believe in a million years he did, then obviously it is a matter for them.’

  ‘But no one broke in,’ Kate said quietly. ‘The door was locked. The windows were all closed.’

  ‘They were. I checked downstairs.’ Greg threw his damaged painting into the corner with some force. ‘What a pity you didn’t let me check upstairs too. I might have saved you some of the shock. I’ll ring the police, Dad.’ Forcing his way past them he disappeared.

  Diana reached for Kate’s hand. ‘You must come back and stay with us, my dear. You can’t possibly stay here alone after this.’

  Kate didn’t argue. Following the others down the narrow staircase she ducked into the kitchen long enough to retrieve four tumblers and the bottle of whisky then she followed them into the living room, where Greg, having rung the police, was stoking up the fire. ‘They’ll be here as soon as possible,’ he said. He straightened and faced Kate. ‘I owe you an apology. Dad was right. It was unspeakably childish of me to try and frighten you away, but I swear to you, I had nothing to do with this.’ His shoulders slumped slightly as he accepted a glass of whisky from her. She had added no water to any of them. ‘I may have been offhand about my paintings up there, but some of those were very special. To me, at any rate. I would not have damaged them.’

  She gave him a watery grin. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Kate dear.’ Roger sat down in the armchair near the fire. ‘I think perhaps you should check all your belongings. Make sure nothing else is missing.’ He glanced across at the table where her laptop computer and the printer sat amongst a litter of books. ‘Though I can’t believe anyone would have broken in and missed that. That of all things they would have taken, surely.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Thank God they didn’t. But you’re right. I’ll check. I had some silver bangles and rings in the bedroom. I didn’t notice if they were still there.’ She moved towards the door, then she hesitated. Upstairs was suddenly somewhere hostile.

  Without saying anything Greg followed her. ‘I’ll go first,’ he said.

  Nothing in her bedroom had been touched. There was no sign that anyone had been there at all. They searched carefully, then ventured once more into the spare room. ‘I was going to look for the torc,’ Greg said. ‘But perhaps we’d better not touch anything else. They will probably want to fingerprint everything in here.’

  She stared round. The bluebottles were still here as well, their angry buzz vibrating in the silence as they divebombed the single light bulb in the centre of the ceiling. She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. I just don’t understand,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Who can tell why people do things. There are so many reasons. I think this person was angry. For some reason he was angry.’

  ‘He was searching for something he couldn’t find perhaps.’

  ‘But what. Money?’

  ‘If it was money he would have looked in the bedroom. Under the chair seats. Up the chimney.’ She gave a weak smile. ‘I remember when my sister’s flat was burgled. That was what they did. No. It was something in here, he wanted. Something specific.’

  ‘The torc?’

  ‘But how would he have known it was here. I was the only person who knew about it.’

  They looked at each other.

  Marcus

  The word had not been spoken out loud, but it was there, hanging in the air between them. Kate shook her head. Marcus as a personality was an invention; an invention she and Greg and Alison had thought up between them in a strange spontaneous way; the creation of a fertile mind, hers, fed by the promptings of two devious ones, theirs.

  ‘So, who else knew about it?’ Greg prompted softly. ‘You thought of someone, just then.’

  ‘Only Marcus,’ she said.

  XXI

  The police spent a long time searching the spare room at the cottage and it was after four before the tired men climbed into their vehicle and drove along the bumpy track back to Redall Farmhouse followed by the Lindseys’ Land Rover. Kate stood for a moment watching the taillights of the police vehicle as it disappeared away into the woods, then she followed the others back inside. Her head was spinning and she was exhausted. She had grown to love Redall Cottage, she realised, in the short time she had been there, in spite of her occasional nervousness, and suddenly what confidence she had in the place had been smashed. It was as if a new friend had turned round and kicked her in the teeth.

  Diana had paused to wait for her in the entrance hall. ‘You can sleep in Greg’s room, Kate. He’s gone straight upstairs to make up the bed for you.’

  ‘But what about him?’ Kate followed her into the warm familiar room. The fire had died to ash but it was still cosy, still redolent with coffee and wine and the faintest suspicion of oregano and garlic from their supper so many hours before.

  ‘He will be perfectly all right,’ Roger put in sternly. ‘He has appropriated my study through there as his studio.’ He indicated a room off the entrance hall which she had not so far seen. ‘He can camp in there. You look completely exhausted, my dear. I suggest you go straight upstairs and sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.’

  In spite of her tiredness Kate found herself staring around Greg’s bedroom as she sat wearily down on the bed, but if she was looking for some clue to his personality amongst his belongings she was disappointed. The room had obviously been – and still looked like – the spare room of the house. The furnishings, though comfortable and charming, had that strange air of not belonging to anyone in particular which spare rooms acquire. The style was too feminine to be Greg’s; too masculine to be a woman’s room. She looked down at his things on the table by the window. In front of the small, square Edwardian dressing mirror lay a scattering of belongings. Besides the obvious brush and a comb there were cufflinks – so, he dressed up formally when he wanted to – somehow she couldn’t quite picture it. There was a paintbrush, seemingly unused, several pencils of differing hardness, a pile of small change, a crumpled train ticket issued at Liverpool Street, a chain of paper clips, some Polo mints in a scruffy remnant of silver paper and an exquisite enamelled snuff box. She picked the latter up and stared at it for a moment, enchanted, then she continued her weary scrutiny of the room. The walls were covered with a pretty flowered wallpaper and criss-crossed with beams, the ceiling was low, the furniture mainly Victorian. It was small and comfortable and safe.

  It took her only two minutes to undress, donning the cotton nightshirt she had stuffed into her shoulder bag with her toothbrush, and slide gratefully into the bed.

  Pulling the duvet up over her head Kate closed her eyes. Minutes later she opened them again. She was too tired, too stressed, her brain too active to sleep. Hugging the pillow she lay looking towards the window at the blackness of the sky and the tears began to run down her cheeks. Outside, across the grass, the mud gleamed in the starlight as slowly the tide crawled in across the saltings.

  It was daylight when she fell at last into a fitful doze and well after eleven before she awoke, rocketed out of her uneasy dream by the sound of loud pop music from the room next door. Sitting up slowly she swung her feet to the floor, rubbing her face wearily in her hands. From downstairs, as Johnny Rotten paused momentarily to draw breath, she could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner.

  Ten minutes later, her face washed in cold water, her hair brushed and fully dressed in her skirt and blouse of the night before, she ran downstairs. The sitting room half of the large living area was deserted – even the cats were missing. Peering through the oak studs which divided the room she saw that Roger sat alone at the kitchen table. He was reading The Times. The sound of the vacuum had shifted to the furthest recesses of the house as he looked up and saw her. He smiled. ‘Coffee is on. Come and have a cup. You look as though you could do with one.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She sat down opposite him. She wondered for a minute how he had managed t
o get hold of a newspaper so early – surely they weren’t delivered out here – then she remembered the time. It was already nearly midday. Time and plenty for any of her hosts to have gone out, half way round the county and returned if they had wanted to.

  He pushed a cup towards her before folding his paper and setting it neatly beside his plate and leaning forward on his elbows. ‘I had a long talk with the police this morning on the phone. After due reflection overnight they seem to think as you did that Greg probably did it himself, or at least that he was responsible. There was absolutely no sign of a break in and he is the only person besides Di and myself, and you of course, to have a key to the cottage.’

  Kate stared at him. ‘But surely, he wouldn’t destroy his own pictures.’

  Roger sighed. ‘It’s difficult to tell sometimes what is going on in my son’s mind, Kate. I often think he hates his talent.’ He poured some more coffee into his own cup. ‘My dear –’ he paused, searching for the right words. ‘I would of course understand if you decided that you wanted to leave, and I would be more than happy to return your rent. All of it. I am extremely embarrassed by everything that has occurred. But if you still want to stay –’ He hesitated. ‘If you still want to stay at the cottage I shall get someone over there today to change the locks, and I will see to it myself that no one has a key but you for the rest of your tenancy. I can’t apologise enough for all the distress this must have caused you.’ He smiled. He looked exhausted. His face, beneath dry, paper-thin skin was drained of colour.

  Impulsively Kate reached over and put her hand over his. In the daylight her fear had evaporated. ‘I think I would like to stay. It’s so lovely here and my book is going so well.’ She glanced at the window, framed in blue gingham curtains. ‘Of course, it’s easy to say that now, with the sun shining outside and the house busy with people.’ She looked down into the depths of her coffee. ‘I’m not sure how I will feel in the dark, on my own.’ She shrugged apologetically.