Tower of Silence (32 page)

Krzystof had unearthed a torch from the glove compartment of the hire car, and this made him feel a bit better equipped for storming the dark citadel.

The rain had stopped but as he went through the orchard the trees were dripping with moisture, and the damp night soaked into his jacket and spangled his hair. Several times he paused to listen, thinking he had caught the sound of furtive footsteps coming after him, and once he whipped round, flicking on the torch to scan the darkness. But there was nothing to be seen save the skeletal outlines of the trees, and if anything moved in the darkness it did so under a cloak of invisibility.

Even Joanna would have had to acknowledge that this was a situation where embroidering was not necessary. Having done the classic prowl through the dark old house, Krzystof was now preparing to storm the ancient,
legend-drenched tower. Gothic hero stuff after all. He walked cautiously because the road was deeply rutted, and the last thing he needed on a night like this was to stumble on the uneven surface and sprain his ankle.

As he neared the tower, his heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. I’m not good at this hero-stuff, he thought. I’m not designed for it. Yes, but supposing this leads you to Joanna. Supposing it was her mythical lover who made those footprints inside Teind House and caused those lights in the Round Tower? But there isn’t a lover, thought Krzystof fiercely. I
know
there isn’t.

But if Joanna had not had a lover–and of course she had not!–might she have had a murderer? The thought struck chillingly against Krzystof’s mind, but he knew it had been there for some time. Oh, get on with it, you nerd!

He was no longer entirely sure about the light he had seen inside the tower. He could not see it now, and he was starting to suspect that it had only been a vagrant spear of moonlight, perhaps catching a gleam of something. Moonlight in the midst of a thunderstorm? You’re trying to duck out of this!

But he was not trying to duck out at all. It was just that the closer he got to the tower, the less likely he thought it that there would be anything to investigate. Or would there? The Stornforth police had checked the tower; they had assured Krzystof that it had been one of the first places they had looked, and there was no reason to disbelieve them or doubt their efficiency. But he would check anyway.

The palpable age of the tower did not especially daunt him; in fact, in other circumstances he would have been extremely interested in the place, and would have been wondering what fragments of history might be found inside, and whether the Rosendale might mount a small exhibition under the banner of warlike Christianity. Eighth-and ninth-century monks guarding their small religious treasures from the marauding Vikings who had frequently made raids to grab anything that was going in the way of females and possessions…Sixteenth-century abbots burying Mass vessels in the garden to fool Henry VIII’s commissioners. Yes, it was a good idea. Krzystof went on thinking about it because it helped him to ignore the feeling that the nearer he got, the more clearly he could be seen by the eyes that watched him from the slitted windows.

(And there are some eyes that can eat your soul, remember…)

Whatever the eighth-or ninth-century monks who had built this tower had done about marauding Vikings, they had built this stronghold firmly and well. It was amazing that it was still in such good repair a thousand years on. Krzystof walked round it until he found the small door set deep into the black stones.

The door swung inwards easily and smoothly when he pushed it open, with only the faintest whisper of sound, and a faint warning note jabbed at his mind. Did this mean the hinges had recently been oiled? No, it was more likely that the recent police search had loosened any rust.

The darkness came at him like a thick stifling cloak,
and he pulled the torch from his jacket pocket and flicked it on, fully prepared for dirt and decay and for scuttlings from mice or rats or birds. But the little round room was far cleaner than he had expected, in fact it was far cleaner than it had any right to be. It’s been swept, thought Krzystof incredulously. Quite recently as well–there’s no dust or dirt anywhere. Was that the police search? But as he moved the torch slowly around, he thought it was not. The little room had the look of constant care–of dust and cobwebs kept ruthlessly in check, even of ledges in the stone walls carefully wiped clean. There might be some perfectly ordinary explanation for this, however; the place was bound to be a landmark and there might be a local history society or a preservation group who kept it in reasonable condition for tourists and students.

Other than the surprising cleanliness there was nothing to be seen, except, of course, for the steps directly in front of him, which would wind up inside the tower, probably to the very top. Krzystof shone the torch onto the ground. Footprints in the dust this time? jeered his mind. Well, why not? But there were no footprints, because there was no dust. The only prints were the invisible ones left on the atmosphere by centuries of history.

After a moment Krzystof went back to prop the door open, using a stone from outside, and, taking a firmer grip on the torch, he began to ascend the stair.

And now it felt as if the ancient tower was coming alive all around him. The steps were solid stone, a little worn at the centre, and Krzystof’s feet made no sound on them
as he went cautiously upwards. The light he had seen from Teind House–if light there had been–had seemed to come from the slit-like windows, halfway up. Could it have been the light of a torch–of someone going slowly up and up these steps, and round and round, until the very top was reached?

The higher he went, the more he was aware of the past all around him, as if the tower’s history was waking, and projecting itself, palimpsest-like, onto the present. The beleaguered monks, after all? Bustling worriedly up and down these very stairs, squirrelling away religious artefacts in the face of a raid? But Krzystof thought what he was sensing was far more recent: he thought it was more as if something violent and shattering had happened here, so that the early memories of the tower’s origins and its creators had been smothered and dimmed.

Joanna’s death? Would that be violent and shattering enough? For goodness’ sake, man, you’ve been in enough peculiar places to know about unquiet spirits and the lingering echoes of extreme violence. But she can’t be here; they searched this place from top to toe. She can’t even have been kept here, or they’d have found signs. But supposing whoever took her cleaned up afterwards? Swept and tidied everything away, and swabbed down the decks? But this was so preposterous an idea that Krzystof dismissed it instantly, and went on up the stairs.

The steepness and the sharp twist of the steps made his leg muscles ache before he had gone even a quarter of the way up, but the higher he went, the more he was aware of real sounds: of tiny scufflings and murmurings
that might only be the wind groaning in the gaps of the ancient structure or mice scuttling to and fro, but might as easily be the sound of soft footsteps creeping up the stairs after him, or the groaning of someone held prisoner somewhere in the sour darkness…

He swung round, trying to see back down the steps, but they wound too sharply round and he could not. Oh hell, this was turning into outright melodrama. But I’m blowed if I’m going to retreat now, he thought. And of course there’s no one in here. Onwards and upwards. But every slight sound tore at his already stretched nerve-endings, and every twist of the stair sent his heart pounding with nervous dread. There
is
someone in here with me, he thought. I’m not imagining it: I can
feel
that there’s someone else in here, just as I could feel it in Teind House. Someone crouching just above him, waiting on the next twist of the stair, perhaps? Was that the sound of someone breathing very quietly, or just the wind scudding through the ancient stones again?

A faint spill of light was visible ahead of him, which must mean he was reaching the halfway point and one of the narrow windows. Yes, the stairs widened briefly into a tiny stone room, five or six feet square, with a narrow window set into the stone walls. A resting place, probably; a tower this high would probably have several. Krzystof paused, and turned to shine the torch back down the stairs.

His heart leapt in the most complete terror he had ever known. Standing just below him was a woman whose hair hung in rain-sodden tangles over her face, and whose eyes
were mad and glaring, and empty of all sanity. It was the woman he had interviewed three days earlier at Moy.

Mary Maskelyne.

And in her right hand she was holding a glinting knife.

For a brief, bizarre moment, the two of them were enclosed in the cold blue triangle of light from Krzystof’s torch, as if they were standing on a lit stage. Krzystof had no idea how Mary came to be there, or what she wanted, but all that mattered was getting away from her and raising the alarm. How? demanded his mind. Because in case you hadn’t noticed, she’s standing between you and the stair leading down and to get to the ground you’ve got to go past her—

He stared into the mad eyes, aware that he was seeing the real person who lived behind the demure, polite woman he had met at Moy. This was the girl who had butchered her parents when she was fourteen, and who had gone on to kill two people in prison years afterwards.

And in a minute she’s going to kill me, he thought. I’m in her way–I’ve seen that she’s got out of Moy, and she’ll need to get rid of me. It’ll be a question of survival for her. He took a firmer grip on the torch, which could be used as a weapon, but his mind was darting ahead, flinching from the crunch of bone as he smashed it down on her skull. Yes, but if it’s her or me…

But Mary did not move, although Krzystof had the impression of tightly coiled nerves and muscles that
would spring into action at the smallest touch. He forced himself not to look at the knife, and he tried not to look at the wild eyes. But once you had looked at them–really looked–it was very hard to look away. Panic-stricken half-memories of primitive beliefs–of how the evil eye of a murderer could hypnotise–tumbled through his mind, and to dispel these he said, ‘Mary? It
is
Mary, isn’t it?’ By this time he was so wrought up that he would not really have been surprised to discover that he was seeing a chimaera or a ghost, or even just some weird thought-projection of the creature still locked inside Moy.

She said, in a voice so laden with madness that Krzystof’s skin crawled, ‘Yes, of course it’s Mary.’

‘I thought it was. We met a couple of days ago. I’m Krzystof Kent. Do you remember?’

‘Oh, I remember, Krzystof.’

‘Why are you here?’ said Krzystof. ‘What do you want?’ And what will you do if she says, in that wet gloating voice,
I want you, my dear
…? Oh, for pity’s sake.

‘I want
her
,’ said the mad voice. ‘The one who lives at Teind House.’

‘Selina March?’ said Krzystof, uncomprehendingly, and then thought: damn and blast, I shouldn’t have said her name, because if this mad creature didn’t know it before, she does now.

‘Selina March,’ said Mary softly, making it sound like an obscenity. ‘Yes, that’s the one. The one who should have died all those years ago in India. But she didn’t die; she escaped and my sister died instead.’

‘Your–I didn’t know you had a sister.’ First I’m asking if she remembers meeting me, and
now
I’m enquiring politely about her relations as if we’re at a social gathering, for heaven’s sake! Yes, but if I can keep her talking like this I might manage to lull her into a false sense of security. And then what? You’ve still got to get past her. And she’s mad. Not just disturbed or eccentric, she’s
really
mad.

‘Yes, I had a sister,’ said the terrible thing on the stair. ‘Only she died before I was born, and my parents never got over it. They never loved me because there wasn’t room for me in their minds. She was perfect, you see, my dead sister. Perfect and unspoiled. She never grew up, so she couldn’t ever be anything
but
perfect and unspoiled, and that’s why they were able to turn her into a saint.’

‘That’s immensely sad. But—’

‘There was a group of children who were taken hostage in a village in India,’ she said, as if he had not spoken. ‘Alwar. Years and years ago. Before I was born. Another world. Except it’s lived on, that world. It’s here with us now–can’t you feel that it’s here now? They all died, those children. All except one.’ She was edging up the steps towards him, and Krzystof could very nearly smell the madness. Like stale sweat. Like old, dried blood. And I’m trapped on this narrow stair with her.

‘My parents used to say, If one child had to escape that night, why was it not our child?’ said Mary. ‘Why was it that other one? they said. They hated her, that other child,’ said Mary. ‘I hated her too.’ She tightened her hold on the knife; Krzystof saw it glitter. ‘I always knew
that if I found her I’d kill her,’ she said. ‘And now I have found her. Selina March. Prissy little Miss March, never going anywhere or doing anything. Living here all her life, going to church, helping local charities. I’ve listened to them talking about her inside Moy. And that writer woman–she’s your wife, isn’t she?–she knew who Selina was as well.’

Joanna! Krzystof’s mind snapped to attention. But Joanna had not known about Alwar and the fifty-year-old tragedy. Or had she? How about those notes on the laptop?
There were parts of the past that had been sealed away
…she had written.
Dark forbidden chasms which must never be approached, and for a child to have stumbled on that small, largely incomprehensible fragment of the story was at best unfortunate, at worst, damaging. The trouble was that there was no one who could be asked for the truth
…

Krzystof suddenly saw that he might have been looking at those notes from the wrong angle. Was it possible that Joanna had not been setting out a fictional plot at all, but writing of her own childhood? But how could Joanna, born nearly a quarter of a century later, be involved in something that happened in the late 1940s? Look at that one later, Krzystof. Focus on the immediate danger. He said, ‘And so you–escaped from Moy? In order to find Selina–is that right?’