Mulligan's Yard

by Ruth Hamilton

  He stared at her. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Amy shrugged. ‘You are Stephen Wilkinson’s brother and, I understand, a member of some sect or other.’

  ‘I am the Guardian of the Light Eternal.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Clearly, the woman was not impressed. He told her the story of the burning bush in Makersfield, Texas, of the people who had been drawn to the miracle, of the word being spread throughout the world. ‘That is where I shall go to begin the new life,’ he concluded.

  ‘And you say that you are searching for young women?’

  He inclined his head gravely. ‘Of course, the common-or-garden type of girl is very much in demand. But for myself, as a guardian, I require someone from a more elevated background.’

  The mantel clock ticked. It was a cheap thing belonging to Elspeth, rather tinny and inclined to slowness. Amy studied the table, not wanting to look at the plainly unstable visitor, not wanting to think about Eliza, about Margot. But it was no use. ‘You killed my sister,’ she said suddenly. The clock stopped.

  ‘The wrong one,’ he said.

  ‘Wrong?’

  He stood up in front of the fire. ‘You must excuse me,’ he said, ‘but I became very cold while I was outside.’

  ‘Eliza is cold,’ Amy replied. ‘She is on a slab in the morgue. You crushed her skull.’ With his legs spread and one hand resting on a fireguard behind his back, the man looked like a very poor music-hall parody of Napoleon, all self-importance and bigotry. ‘Why did you murder my sister?’

  ‘She was the wrong one.’

  Terror struck at that moment. It was as if Amy’s body had been on hold, in retreat, unavailable for comment. But now she realized that she could well be fighting for her own life. ‘And Margot?’ In spite of all the effort, these words emerged shakily.

  ‘When Eliza went away to London, I gave up all hope of her.’

  ‘Hope? How could you have hope of securing the affections of either of them?’

  Undeterred, he continued, ‘So I chose Margot.’

  ‘You chose her?’

  ‘One day, I shall be Supreme Guardian.’

  Amy could scarcely believe her ears.

  ‘It is my destiny.’

  A new feeling visited Amy’s consciousness. She was suddenly angry, coldly furious. ‘Must your destiny involve members of my family? Does your religion allow you – encourage you – to kill one girl and to strip the other naked in the snow?’

  He lowered his eyelids, raised them after a second or two. ‘It is all foretold,’ he informed her. ‘When the first bush ignited, we knew that, like Moses, we had to lead our people to a Promised Land, a New World. This is our preparation for the end.’

  The end. ‘But why did you remove my sister’s clothing?’

  ‘To make sure that she was the one.’

  Amy made to rise from her chair, decided to stay as small as possible, sat down again. ‘And you would have taken her kicking and screaming to America?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ He used a sleeve to dry up a drop of mucus that hung from his ugly nose. ‘The Lord would have spoken to her after our coupling.’

  The term ‘daft as a bedful of fleas’ flashed through Amy’s mind. Elspeth Moorhead was the mother of many such bald statements. Should Amy scream and wake the Moorheads? No. They, too, might become victims. ‘Coupling, Mr Wilkinson?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I meant to claim her.’

  Amy prayed silently, begging the true God to help her.

  ‘But she was already with child,’ said Wilkinson. ‘Early days, but pregnant, dirtied.’

  ‘She is in hospital,’ replied Amy, ‘being treated for hypothermia. They are having to warm her up because you left her to die.’

  Wilkinson’s eyes began to mist over, and he stumbled back against the fireguard. ‘When we reach America, you will understand,’ he said. ‘The Lord will give you strength.’

  So, the creature who had killed Eliza, who had exposed Margot and her child to the elements, had come for Amy now. She shivered, wondered how she would get through until morning. Why had she forgotten to lock the doors? ‘I am to come with you to America, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She glanced down at her little fob watch, a gift from Mother. It was almost three o’clock and the Moorheads would not rise before seven. Four hours. Four hours to kill, four hours during which she might be killed. ‘Shall I pack a bag?’ she asked.

  ‘I must look at you first.’ His tone was thick.

  ‘You put Margot to sleep – or so she told the nurses – a cloth over her nose and mouth.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  There was no guilt, Amy realized with a jolt. This man truly believed in all this dangerous nonsense. And had she not heard Mona say that he was probably impotent? ‘How do you propose putting me to sleep?’ As soon as this loaded question hit the air, Amy kicked herself inwardly. She should not goad him into action, should keep herself safe for as long as possible.

  ‘I hope that you will come to me voluntarily.’

  Amy swallowed, almost gagged. ‘How shall I persuade myself to do that?’ There she was again, forcing him to take action.

  ‘We shall pray together,’ he answered.

  ‘And if I refuse?’ The anger was heating up, was beginning to rise to the surface. She longed to pick up a weapon, to finish him off. He had committed one murder, had tried to commit a further two by exposing Margot and her child to cruel elements. ‘You will get nowhere with me,’ she said. ‘You are quite the ugliest creature I have ever seen. The word ugly attaches not just to your physical appearance – which is quite bizarre, as I am sure you know – but also to your inner self. How can you speak of God when you are a cold-blooded murderer? That is the worst crime, as it offends all laws, social, criminal and moral.’

  His mouth opened, closed again.

  ‘You will not dare to touch me,’ Amy continued. ‘The girls you practised on were all unconscious, were they not? And not one of them was touched.’ She decided to apply once more for an explanation. ‘Why did you kill Eliza? Why was she the wrong one?’

  ‘She went away to a city of sin.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Amy readily.

  ‘Then she came back and . . . and she was the wrong one.’

  ‘Margot was the wrong one, also,’ said Amy.

  ‘Margot is with child,’ he answered.

  Amy got up from her seat. ‘I am asking you now to leave my house.’

  He made no move.

  ‘I am ordering you to leave,’ she insisted.

  He grinned. ‘I intend to stay.’

  ‘Then I shall go,’ said Amy.

  He crossed the room and hit her cheek with the flat of his hand, sending her reeling towards the back door. She righted herself, turned the handle and drew the door inward. ‘Oh, thank God,’ she muttered, blood streaming from the corner of her mouth.

  James entered the house. ‘Good morning, Mr Wilkinson,’ he said smoothly. ‘All three? In one night, all three Burton-Masseys? My goodness, you have been busy.’

  Amy leaned against a wall, heart thumping wildly, face stinging, mouth bleeding. She watched in dumb fascination while James Mulligan balled a fist and crashed it into Wilkinson’s jaw. ‘Damn you,’ he spat, ‘you murderous bastard.’

  Felled like a slaughtered ox, Wilkinson folded on the floor. Amy, too, slid down the wall, her legs refusing to take her weight. ‘Thank you,’ she managed to repeat, the words bubbling through split flesh.

  ‘Not at all,’ replied James. ‘I’ve been waiting for ages to do that. Now, let’s take a look at your face . . .’

  Twenty-five

  ‘Here, get up off the floor. My mammy believed that many ills come from a person sitting on stone flags.’ Only a slight quickening in his breathing betrayed the fact that James Mulligan had just laid a man out cold.

  She allowed him to lift her. ‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘But I thought you were locked up.’ He lifted her as though she were a
tiny, weightless thing.

  He peered at her lip, could feel her agitated breath on his face. ‘And I was so, but a woman came in and played merry hell, terrified the life out of the whole lot of them, she did. So thank you, Miss Amy Burton-Massey.’

  She closed her eyes for an instant, saw Eliza on the slab, Margot in her hospital bed. She could not bear any of it. ‘Did she die quickly, James?’

  He would not tell Amy about Eliza’s dying statement, not yet, at least. Perhaps this young woman would never need to know that Eliza had killed Rupert Smythe. ‘She died almost instantly,’ he lied. ‘In seconds, I imagine.’ No, poor Eliza had lingered, long enough for the creature here on the floor to have captured Margot, too. He prayed that the brain damage might have removed all pain.

  Amy allowed him to clean her mouth with a handkerchief. He was gentle for so tall and broad a man.

  ‘Your lip is swollen,’ he informed her, ‘but there’s no permanent damage. Now, I’ll make sure that Mona gets to the shop tomorrow. You will stay at home for a day or so, no work, just visit Margot and rest yourself.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She moved her head. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Ah, yes, him.’ James, too, fixed his eyes on the bundle on the floor, looked at his handiwork. He put himself in mind of his own father, a father who had been cruel and dangerous, a drinker, a gambler, a man who had indulged himself and only himself. ‘You see what I am capable of, Amy?’ Thomas Mulligan had won many a brawl in Dublin’s public houses.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you don’t fear me?’

  ‘Not at all. Had there been a knife to hand, I would have finished him off, James. This was a terrifying situation.’

  ‘So it was.’ He nodded sagely. ‘Yes, this was an unusual occasion.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  He placed her in a chair near the fire, his hands achingly lonely once contact with her was lost. Even Eliza’s death, the attack on Margot and, now, the threats to Amy, could not take away the longing, the sheer agony of loving this woman. He must attend now to matters practical, must get himself into sensible mode. ‘Gun cupboard?’ he asked.

  ‘Under the stairs – why, James?’

  ‘I’ll stay with him. You go and fetch me a loaded shotgun. Extra bullets, too.’

  ‘But, James, I—’

  ‘Do it. Remember that the insane can be possessed of great strength once driven to the edge.’

  Amy looked at the man on the floor. He was still breathing, but he looked as if he might well spend the rest of his life where he was, motionless, so deeply unconscious. ‘I can’t see him giving us any trouble, really, so—’

  ‘Amy?’

  ‘Right.’ Like a child obeying the male parent, Amy went to do his bidding. The guns had not been used for years; Alex Burton-Massey had finished off many a fox with this little arsenal. Father had not approved of foxes, especially when they had killed masses of poultry only to make off with just one chicken. Yet he had refused to join the hunt, because hunting was obnoxious. ‘Starved dogs sent out to find a dinner that would not appease a couple of them, damned fool hobby.’ As she picked out the best-looking of the guns, Amy heard his voice echoing down the years and into her head.

  She sat on the second stair, gun between her knees, bullets in a cardboard box by her side. Father, Mother, now Eliza. ‘Just Margot and I now,’ she whispered into near-darkness. ‘And whatever Rupert left in Margot’s womb.’

  What next? she wondered. Another funeral, once the doctors had finished poring over Eliza’s remains. Strange how she had managed to look beautiful even when dead, the head wrapped in a piece of linen, curls breaking free to occupy that alabaster forehead. Then, once the burial was over, another wait, Margot and a birth, an unwanted child.

  Amy checked herself. The baby would be a piece of tomorrow, a step towards the future. ‘We shall love him or her, no matter what,’ she mumbled. But first, this other business, the matter of the lunatic intruder. She stood up and carried the gun into the kitchen. God forbid that James should use it.

  ‘Wake Moorhead,’ James said.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’ He picked up the weapon, examined it, loaded it, left it broken. ‘He must take my car and fetch the police.’

  Amy turned to leave the room once more, then stopped in her tracks. ‘He has never driven a car. Mind, he did work the land for many years, so he has used a tractor.’

  ‘There you go, then, problem solved.’

  ‘But what if . . . ?’

  ‘What if gets nothing done,’ replied James. ‘What if is a hide into nowhere – another of Mammy’s sayings.’

  She obeyed, returned to the kitchen and sat in silence with two men, a gun and a bubbling kettle. James made tea, flinched in unison with her when he saw the pain caused by hot liquid against a cut mouth. ‘Will I cool that down for you with more milk?’

  She shook her head, allowed her eyes to rest once again on the guardian. ‘No, thanks. The police will be looking for him, no doubt.’ Her gaze lingered on the hideous, now snoring figure on the flags.

  ‘Yes, there’ll be enough evidence in the shed and on his clothes to arrest him. I was thinking, I wonder where people get these strange ideas regarding religion.’

  She didn’t know, couldn’t have cared less.

  ‘Taking little bits of the Bible, usually Old Testament, then blowing them up out of all proportion.’

  ‘He spoke of wise virgins,’ replied Amy eventually. ‘Killed Eliza because she had been to London, the city of sin, then dismissed Margot because of her . . . well . . . she is swollen.’

  ‘And so he turned to you.’

  Amy placed the cup in its saucer on the fireguard. ‘There was no reason, no sense. How would he have managed to drag any of us to Texas?’

  James thought for a few moments. ‘They are preparing for the end of the world,’ he told her at last. ‘The end of the world will be dictated by the Supreme Guardian, who may very well instigate mass murder and suicide before changing his identity and running away with the profits.’

  Amy sighed, picked up her cup. ‘Mass hysteria, mass suicide – why do they listen?’

  He lifted a shoulder. ‘Who knows?’

  A sleep-bewildered Eric Moorhead wandered in. ‘Has summat gone on?’ he enquired, one hand brushing over snow-white hair. ‘Bloody hell – pardon me, miss – what the heck’s happened in here?’

  James and Amy were both too tired to relate the full story. ‘Go to Bolton,’ said James, ‘to the police station. Tell them that Peter Wilkinson is here, at Caldwell Farm.’

  ‘Aye, right.’ He moved towards the body on the floor. ‘Snoring like a pig,’ he commented.

  Amy looked at James. ‘Tell Moorhead what he needs to know, please.’ She went out to wash her face and comb her hair. Chill water bit into her cut lip, but she continued to splash her face. Anything touched by that evil man must be cleaned as vigorously as possible.

  The reflection in the mirror showed a white face, a drained skin. She lit a second lamp, watched the light as it danced over furniture and gave life to inanimate objects, shifting the shadows, turning, twisting. The dresser had more life in it than Eliza did. And Margot, poor little Margot, alive and in shock.

  She wept softly into a towel, fighting the sobs as best she could. Through the window, a black sky was peppered with stars, each a tiny hole punched into navy velvet. Was heaven up there? Was it anywhere? Would Father, Mother and Eliza live on? Oh, God, please keep them, she prayed inwardly.

  When she came down again, Moorhead had gone, while Wilkinson, muted by that single blow from a massive fist, remained blissfully unaware of his surroundings.

  ‘I gave Moorhead tea and toast,’ said James, ‘then told him the rudiments. He knows that Eliza is dead and that this man killed her. You should go to bed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Amy . . .’

  ‘No.’ This was her house; she could go to bed, stay up, dance a jig if she so chose. He made
her feel like a child in the presence of her father, because some instinct kept telling her to obey him without question. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, James, but I want to see this through.’

  ‘Of course. Shall we make more tea?’

  She drew a hand across her forehead. ‘I suppose so. Anything that will keep us awake until the police arrive.’

  A groaning sound emerged from Wilkinson’s throat. In a flash, James snapped the gun into active mode and pointed it at the intruder. ‘Don’t move,’ he warned.

  James, don’t—’ begged Amy.

  ‘Give me some credit,’ came the reply. ‘Right.’ He addressed Wilkinson now. ‘Sit up with your back against that wall.’

  Slowly, the man eased himself into a sitting position. His jaw, probably broken, hung out of line with the rest of his face. When he managed to focus fully on James, his eyes burned bright with undiluted hatred.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ James informed him.

  Wilkinson tried to speak, but damaged bone prevented him.

  ‘You will be behind bars within the hour.’

  Do they not know who I am and why I am on this earth? Why can they not understand that my future lies with an educated female who will bring good breeding stock into the Light? The people of Makersfield need intelligent women to care for their children, women who could teach whole generations to honour the Eternal Light, to praise the Lord and—

  It is the devil’s creature. There he sits with a gun directed at my head, his face hardened against me. The Burton-Massey girl frowns, too. And I can say nothing because the brute has broken my jaw. It was all meant to be, all dictated to me as I sat within the circle of Light, while I meditated. The papist knows nothing; he is steeped in mistakes made by Rome, errors passed down the years as if they were edicts from God Himself.

  Prison? They cannot imprison me, have not the ability to contain my righteousness and my wrath. Does this Irishman believe that I shall hang? The Light will intervene, will show me what I must do to break the chains of humankind, for I am beyond and above the judgement of mere mortals. I have done no wrong: I merely removed obstacles.

  ‘I think he’s clinically insane,’ said James. ‘He may well finish the rest of his days in an asylum.’