فصل 19

CHAPTER 19

Hal wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there, staring at the photograph, trying to work out what she should do. But at last she heard, very faintly, the sound of the clock in the hall downstairs chiming eleven, and she stood, stretching out her cramped, chilly limbs.

The urge to run back to Brighton and hide from the nightmare she had created was still strong—except that they knew where to find her. Mr. Treswick had her address, and he would come and track her down and start asking questions. And besides . . . Her stomach clenched at the memory of Mr. Smith’s awaiting enforcers, her crushed belongings. Hal had never thought of herself as a coward, but she was, she knew that now. She thought of the man’s voice, his slow soft lisp . . . broken teeth . . . broken bones sometimes . . . and she knew she did not have the courage to face him again.

No. She could not go back there without the money.

Could she run away for good—from everyone? But where would she go, and how, without money? She didn’t even have the money for a taxi back to Penzance, let alone the cash needed for a fresh start in a strange city.

Well, whatever she decided, she couldn’t hide up here forever. She would have to go down and face the family at some point.

Flexing her cold fingers, Hal opened the door.

Standing outside, perfectly still in the darkness of the hallway, was a figure, dark clothes disintegrating into the shadows, standing motionless just inches from Hal’s face.

Hal gasped and took a step backwards into the room, her hand pressed to her chest.

“Jesus—what—”

She found her hands were shaking, and caught at the metal bedstead to steady herself.

“Yes?” The voice of the figure in the shadows was cracked, with a flat Cornish burr. As her fright subsided, Hal felt anger flood in its wake.

“Mrs. Warren? What the hell are you doing snooping outside my room?”

“ ’Tain’t your room,” Mrs. Warren said bitterly. She took a step forwards, over the threshold, sweeping Hal’s meager possessions with a contemptuous look. “And it never will be, if I’ve anything to do with it.” “What do you mean?”

“You know.”

Hal pushed her hands inside her pockets to hide their trembling. She would not show this old woman she was afraid.

“Get out of my way.”

“Just as you like. I came up to tell you, he wants you downstairs.”

“Who’s ‘he’?” Hal said. She tried to keep her voice steady, and it came out colder and sharper than she meant.

“Harding. He’s in the drawing room.”

Hal could not bring herself to say thank you, but she nodded, once, and Mrs. Warren turned to retreat into the shadows of the hallway.

Hal followed her, and was just shutting the door of her room behind her, when Mrs. Warren spoke, jerking her head back over her shoulder towards the room and the scattering of Hal’s belongings.

“She was into all that muck.”

“What?” Hal stopped with her hand on the knob, the door just ajar, a crack of room showing through the gap.

“Them cards. Tarry or whatever she called it. Pagan stuff, it was, devils and naked men. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have had them in the house. I would have burned them all. Disgusting things.” “Who?” Hal said, but Mrs. Warren only continued slowly down the corridor as if she hadn’t heard, and Hal found herself bounding after her retreating back, grabbing the old woman’s wrist, harder than she meant, forcing her to turn back to face her. “Who? Who are you talking about?” “Maggie.” Mrs. Warren spat the name like a swearword, her vehemence sending little flecks of spittle into Hal’s face. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll ask me no more questions. Now, let go of me.” “Wha—” Hal gasped. The words hit like a slap in the face, and the questions rose up inside her, churning too quick to be caught. But the one that beat inside Hal’s skull was unsayable: Did she know?

Before Hal could do more than gasp, Mrs. Warren had wrenched her wrist out of Hal’s grip, with a strength Hal would not have given her credit for, and hurried away down the stairs, silent and malevolent.

Hal let out a long, shuddering breath and then went back inside the bedroom, her heart beating fast enough to make her feel dizzy with it.

Maggie. Her mother’s nickname. Maggie. Her mother who had been here, more than twenty years ago. What had Mrs. Warren meant in bringing her up, here, now? Was it a threat? Did she know the truth? But if so, why had she stood by and said nothing?

There were no answers—and at last, for want of anything else, Hal picked up the tarot cards and began to pack them back into the tin. Mrs. Warren’s threat echoed in her head. She wouldn’t really dare to burn them, would she? It seemed ridiculous—and yet there was something about the venom in her voice that made Hal think it might be a real possibility.

There was no lock on the bedroom door, or on the case, so all Hal could do was pack the cards away inside their tin, push them deep into her suitcase, and hope for the best.

What had made her pack them in the first place? It wasn’t as though she believed.

Hal zipped up the case and turned to leave the room—but then, with a sudden misgiving, she stopped, opened the case, and pushed the tin into her back pocket, alongside the photograph. Let Mrs. Warren snoop. Let her come and look through every pocket of the case. It was only as she reached the top of the narrow, windowless stairs that a thought came to her—a memory of yesterday, of the tap, tap of Mrs. Warren’s cane on the wooden steps of the secret staircase.

But the woman standing outside her doorway just now had held no cane, and her approach had been utterly silent.

The thought made Hal shiver for no reason that she could put her finger on, and she wished again that there was a lock on the bedroom door. She had never felt the need for one before coming here, but the thought of that bitter old woman, creeping silently about the house at night, opening the door to Hal’s room . . .

Hal paused, looking back along the narrow, dark corridor, remembering the way Mrs. Warren had stood there in the darkness. What was she doing? Listening? Watching?

She was about to carry on downstairs when something caught her eye, a darkness in the dark, and she made her way back to stand in front of the closed door, running her fingers over the wood, feeling, rather than seeing, how very wrong she had been.

There was a lock on the door. Two, in fact. They were long, thick bolts, top and bottom.

But they were on the outside.