The Feast of All Souls
Page 30
But all through our first decade of marriage it was not God I feared, but Arodias. He had no reason to expose me, of course, but might, for all I knew, do so out of petty spite. And there were the other servants – Kellett, most of all. I knew it could only be justice if the axe fell, but the thought of the suffering such an event would cause my loved ones was too much to bear. Oh, it’s true – Geraint, God rest him, was devoted to me, but could he have forgiven me, had he known? I wanted to believe so, but did not dare put that to the test. And so I suffered in silence and watched my children grow, my worldly joys all tainted with dread...
And then, in December 1851, a miracle: Arodias Thorne died.
I learned it from his solicitors. It seemed I was, almost, his sole beneficiary. The mills were mine, his tenements, his warehouses – all of his considerable estate. Including Springcross House and the lands appertaining.
Briefly I wondered if it might constitute some gesture of repentance on his part, but this I thought unlikely. More probably, it was Arodias Thorne’s last, black joke. It certainly caused surprise – and, I think, suspicion, in my husband’s case. I was able, I am glad to say, to convince that good man that Arodias Thorne had entertained nothing more than a paternal affection towards me, an emotion for which he had found no other outlet in his prosperous but lonely existence – hence this final and startlingly generous bequest.
Why did he really do it? I have often pondered the question. On the one hand, who else was there to leave his worldly goods to? Perhaps it was a means to leave one last mark on my life, by forcing me to remember. Perhaps he hoped to poison my marriage with suspicion; with a man other than my husband, he might have succeeded. Most of all, though, I believe it was so that I would know what he had done.
What had he done, you ask? Well, I have no proof, merely conjecture. To understand what that conjecture was, and how I arrived at it, requires an account of my final visit to Springcross House.
I wanted nothing of his. I made arrangements for the immediate sale of his properties and businesses – vetting, wherever I could, the prospective buyers in the hope Arodias’ tenants and employees would enjoy kinder treatment and conditions than before. As for the house – that was why, early in the February of 1852, I returned to Manchester for the first time since leaving Springcross House as Mrs Hartley.
When I was made aware that Springcross House was now my property, my first worry was how to deal with the servants – would any there remember me, after all these years? However, I soon learned I need have no worries on that score.
You’ll remember, Mr Muddock, my saying I was almost the sole beneficiary of Arodias’ will; the other was Kellett, to whom Arodias had bequeathed one hundred thousand pounds – more than enough to keep him in whatever manner he desired to become accustomed for life, no matter how depraved that manner might be. Those monies had been made available even before the reading of the will; Arodias’s solicitors had been instructed to that effect. At which point the butler had, taking the wages of his many sins, vanished.
With Arodias dead and Kellett gone, the servants – most of them, I have no doubt, with histories that might not bear close scrutiny by the authorities – had looted the place for anything they could carry away and fled. No record of their names could be found; any such record had gone with Kellett, we knew not where. Since then, the great house had stood derelict, open to the elements and any who sought its shelter.
My husband was against my going there alone, for who might now have made their abode in Springcross House? I might have answered that no-one could have been viler than its former master, but forebore. For my own part, I was adamant Geraint should not accompany me, lest he stumble over some incriminating matter left there out of carelessness, or – more likely – by intent, to inflict a final ruinous blow on me. If there were any ghosts from my past at Springcross House, I would face them by myself, and lay them to rest if I could.
By way of compromise, I agreed to take Thomas, whom I had hired when I first moved to Liverpool and had served me faithfully ever since – a former soldier, stolid, loyal and dependable. He had always been my, rather than my husband’s man, so I felt secure regarding both my physical safety and any potential threats to my reputation. My husband was satisfied with this. Thomas, though in his forties by then, was strong and fit, while Geraint was my own age and – as I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr Muddock, having known him – while a good and kind man, was no warrior born.
And so we took the train from Liverpool to Manchester, and then a carriage from the station. As I said before, I took little notice of the city, nor of Crawbeck as we passed through it, but doubtless it had changed as one might expect, with more low, mean tenements sprawling up the hill slopes. Even if it had been unchanged, I was not; spying my reflection in the glass, I saw a plump matron with greying hair, but was more than content to be so. It was hard to recognise the woman who had ridden this way in 1837, or believe I could once have stirred the passions of Arodias Thorne. That sense of distance enabled me to contemplate Springcross House with a smaller measure of fear.
The gates of Springcross House had been forced asunder; a length of broken chain lay on the gravel path, and the journey to the house itself was decidedly bumpy. When we reached the house itself...
I’m sorry, Mr Muddock. Might I trouble you for another small measure of your brandy? I vowed to avoid any such stimulant until this testament was completed, but it has been a most fatiguing day.
Many thanks. Yes, the house.
Arodias had not been dead two months when I visited Springcross House, yet the condition of the building and grounds suggested a far longer period of neglect. Windows were broken; great pieces of stucco had fallen from the walls, ivy writhed across the frontage and slates were missing from the roof. And the once-beautiful gardens, the one aspect of the place for which I cherished the least glimmer of warmth, were wild and overgrown, the trees, shrubs and plants stripped bare and withered by the winter winds.
It was as if Arodias had allowed the whole building to fall into disrepair once I had gone, yet my enquiries showed he had done no such thing. It was as though, like Jonah’s gourd, it had grown up, then withered, in a day. It is only one more mystery amid the rest.
Inside, the impression of desuetude was much the same, but the explanation was more readily apparent. The servants had departed like a plague of locusts, leaving only when they had stripped the house bare. Even the carpets and light-fittings were gone. With no servants to clean them, the empty chambers were already accruing layer on layer of dust. There were pale gaps on the walls where paintings had been taken down; the kitchen’s drawers and cupboards had been emptied. In places one could hear the drip of water and the scuttling of rats.
One painting remained in the house. I invite you both to guess which one. Yes, Mrs Rhodes: that damned portrait of Arodias in his study. I can well imagine how even those depraved souls might have feared to touch it. I had Thomas take it down, then slashed its face to ribbons with a knife. We lit the fire in the study, and the portrait, torn and broken, went into it.
At one point, I thought I heard a chuckle from behind me. Well, no; let me be precise. His chuckle. A middle-aged woman’s fancy, no doubt. But still.
I wished to remain no longer than I must, but there was another purpose to my visit. You see, Mr Muddock, one small detail regarding the death of Arodias Thorne continued to worry me.
The circumstances of his passing were somewhat gruesome. If one believed in poetic justice one might have even called them apt. Arodias, it appeared, had been stricken with a violent apoplexy while reading late at night. Not even time to pray forgiveness for his sins; I confess to having taken a most uncharitable satisfaction from that, which made me feel guilty. After all, I hoped, and still hope, for forgiveness for my own.
But that is neither the poetic part, nor the detail that concerned me. Allegedly, the apoplexy had not killed him outright; he had risen from his chair, then fallen. To be precise
once more, he had pitched headlong into the very fireplace in which I had burned his portrait. Where a fire had been burning.
Why, Mrs Rhodes, you have gone quite pale. Do you feel faint? Mr Muddock, I believe another small measure of your excellent brandy might be in order. Indeed, you look as if you yourself might benefit from a little...
To resume: I mention that rather unpleasant aspect of Mr Thorne’s death not to revel in his suffering, but because his body had been identified – could only be identified – from its clothing. The head, face and hands had all been burned beyond recognition in the fire.
I can see from your expression, Mr Muddock, that you divine my fear correctly. Arodias Thorne was not dead – the body discovered was doubtless that of some poor unfortunate he had made away with, using the fire to disfigure the face and hands beyond recognition – although whether he was still alive, in any commonly accepted sense of the term, is harder to say.
But why should such a man so cavalierly dispose of the wealth he fought so hard to gain? Ah, but even his wealth was only a means to an end. He wanted power; he wanted control. Wealth gave him that in earthly terms, but sooner or later death must take it from him. What he truly sought – his ultimate goal, if you will – was what he called the Fire Beyond. Through it, remember, he believed he could attain immortality. Eternal life, and – and, I think, a kind of transcendence. Where he was going, money was unimportant.
For myself, I cannot say what the Fire Beyond truly was. I can testify only to what I saw, on that long-ago Christmas night I wish I could believe was only a horrible, fevered dream. It might have been a trick, or a delusion of Mr Thorne’s that I briefly came to share. I do not know. Still less can I say if it would, indeed, fulfil him in the ways he dreamt of. I do know, however, that he believed it would do so. The Fire Beyond, immortality – they may have been pipe-dreams on his part, but believe me, Mr Muddock and Mrs Rhodes, the Moloch Device, and the children who perished in it, were all too real.
The child I had borne Arodias – the one he had told me had died at birth, but about whose fate I could no longer delude myself – would have been thirteen years old at the time of Arodias’ ‘death’. The age of reason, we are told, and the time he referred to as ‘Perihelion’ would have coincided with that development.
That underground chamber, I believed then and now, was where Arodias’ story truly ended – or, perhaps, truly began. It was also where the body of my first-born child, along with those of countless other innocents murdered in the Moloch Device, lay. If nothing else, I hoped to ensure them a decent Christian burial. And if I could find some way to strike a blow against Arodias – although I supposed him to be far beyond the reach of any justice but God’s by now – then I’d do that, too.
Yet, search as I might, neither Thomas nor I found any trace of the hidden entrance in the music room, still less the place it led to. It was as though they had never been.
At the last, I was forced to admit defeat. I had Springcross House pulled down, every trace of it erased – yes, Mr Muddock, even the gardens. The land was sold to the Corporation of Manchester. A hard choice, but one I felt I must, for my own sanity, make. I did also make arrangements with the Church authorities – in exchange for a sizeable donation – that the site be blessed and consecrated. If I could not find my child’s remains, I could at least be sure that he, and the others, rested in holy ground.
KELLETT’S DISAPPEARANCE REMAINED a source of disquiet to me for another five years. He moved, it later emerged, to the district of Whitechapel in London, where any appetite, however base, was readily sated. He fell in with a crew of procurers who specialised in abducting women and young girls for the use of men like him; all he and his kind need do was select a victim.
However, he made the mistake of choosing the young – the very young – daughter of a soldier who had just returned from the Crimea, with others of his regiment. These young gentlemen, having alerted the police, took the law somewhat into their own hands thereafter, and fortunately so; they found the girl in good time to save her virtue, her sanity and her life.
Mr Kellett, it seems, reached under his jacket to draw out his wallet, being convinced that this would be sufficient to extricate him from any difficulties, but the girl’s father, in addition to his quite natural outrage at the whole business, assumed him to be reaching for a weapon, and shot him several times with a revolver. I am pleased to report that the father and his confederates were subsequently exonerated of any wrongdoing, but more pleased yet to report that Kellett expired two days later, in what appears to have been extreme agony. I have tried in vain to repent my lack of Christian charity in this matter.
Through all the years I have feared to tell the tale, because there have always been those who might be hurt. My husband, my children... I often thought of coming to you in the past, Mr Muddock, as Geraint always trusted you implicitly, but knew that to confide these matters to you would place you in a most invidious position, as you and he were not only close in business, but friends. But now Geraint has passed away, and the problem no longer arises.
I fear judgement, Mr Muddock and Mrs Rhodes. It has been hard enough to speak of what I have done, and been, before yourselves. Before the eyes of the world I dare not speak more – such is the measure of my cowardice. But I fear that other judgement too – the one I cannot escape, and must face, sooner rather than later. And the dread that Providence would bring the Lord’s wrath upon me in this life, through my family, has never left me. Not even now.
And that, I think, is all, save for the end.
My name is Mary Wynne-Jones, widow of Geraint Wynne-Jones, shipping merchant, of the City of Liverpool. I was born Mary Carson in a small Cheshire village called Burscough, in the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and two. This is my Confession. I believe it to be as full and comprehensive as needs be, and I leave its disposition in your hands. And now, Mr Muddock, I hope I might trouble you for another – and more copious – measure of your brandy.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Perihelion
31st October 2016
ALICE REACHED THE end of Mary Carson’s narrative in silence. She didn’t dare glance at John. After a moment she heard him breathe out, then settle back on the bed. That was when she finally turned to him.
He looked back at her, eyes bloodshot. “You know,” he said at last, “when Sixsmythe said Thorne was more than he seemed, I thought –”
“That he was better?”
“Yeah. He’d got a bad reputation, but under it, he was...”
“I get you. I thought the same way when I started reading that. But he was worse.”
“Yeah.”
“That poor woman.” Alice turned away and peered out of the window; the slope outside was deserted.
“You feel sorry for her?” John asked.
“Hell, yes. You don’t?”
“’Course. I just thought you might – I mean, giving up her baby and all.”
“Because of Emily, you mean?” Alice glared. John looked away. “That bastard went to work on her, John. He took her apart psychologically. In the end, she was in no shape to outwit him. The blame’s on him. Not her.”
“I knew that. But she blamed herself.”
“Of course she did. There’s no way you can’t.”
She realised they were both speaking in whispers. The house was silent. She looked back out of the window.
“Nothing doing?” whispered John, crawling onto the bed beside her to look out as well.
“Can’t see anything. Not even the Red Man.”
“That’s a long time,” John said. “Normally it’s only a few minutes, and then it’s back to our world.”
“I know. Maybe this is the end-game.”
“In which case,” John pointed out, “it’s our move.”
“I know. But what are we supposed to do?”
He rubbed his face. “The children want something, right? We can see that. And the Red Man wants something else – en
ough that he’s stuck his oar in with the kids.”
“Yeah,” said Alice, “and I’m caught in the middle. Question is, which side should we be rooting for?”
“The Red Man’s protected you, and the children tried to kill you. But at the same time, the Red Man didn’t want us reading that box-file, and the children stopped him burning it.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be backing either side, then. At least...”
“At least what?”
“At least until we understand what the fight’s about.”
Alice got off the bed; suddenly she felt charged-up, full of energy. I’m close to something, she thought. It’s at my shoulder, behind my back, maybe even right in front of me, but it’s like a ghost and I can’t see it – can’t see it, unless. Unless what, though? Unless what? Unless something happens to make the ghost visible. What would do that? Did the ghosts need to absorb more energy from their environment to register visually – absorbing heat radiation to convert into a visual image? Wasn’t that why ghost-chasers like John claimed haunted houses grew cold when ghosts appeared?
“Alice?”
She shook her head, held up a hand to ward him off. He had the sense to fall silent: he’d seen her like this when they’d lived together, when some train of thought kicked off – except that it was more like lines of dominoes, each knocking over the next to show some odd pattern on the underside.
The ghost. Yes, the ghost. The ghost she couldn’t see but had to. What made a ghost become visible? Did the ghost have to do something, or was it the viewer? Did she need something, some shift of perception – the kind the Moloch Device had created in its victims, or the ancient priests had achieved in their trances?