Merrily said, ‘Mary Roberts?’
‘I don’t know where she got the name Linden from. Perhaps she thought it sounded pretty.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Merrily said. ‘You’re absolutely sure about this?’
‘Soon as I saw the girl with the builder. Look at the photo again. Look at the eyes.’
The eyes were blurred in the picture, but the size and the separation … well, maybe.
‘If I had one of her a couple of years later, even you would be in no doubt. Fuchsia, the first time I saw her and Barlow, they weren’t here to work, just look around, so not in overalls. She was even wearing the same kind of clothes as Mary had. Highly coloured. As if she’d seen some old photos of her mother and gone out of her way to recreate the image. Barlow was asking about the house and I tried to help him – rambling on in a state of slight numbness, trying not to keep staring at the girl. Hell of a shock, Watkins. Like seeing a ghost.’
‘Did you say anything?’
‘No. I needed to know if she knew. Needed to get her alone. The name, you … that was the clincher. Mary’s few possessions included a decrepit, much-thumbed paperback copy of Titus Groan. Mervyn Peake? Leading female character?’
‘Fuchsia.’
‘Pretty conclusive.’
‘And did she know?’
‘Never got her alone to ask. Barlow came back alone some days later telling me she’d been troubled by something in the house. Wouldn’t go into details.’
‘You didn’t tell him you may have known Fuchsia’s mother?’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
Mrs Morningwood bit her lip.
‘You’d better tell me the rest,’ Merrily said.
When you dont go to bed no more because they come to you in your sleep thats pretty bad isnt it. And when you wake up it’s like your body is not yours no more, it’s their’s. They can make your arms and legs move about and make you see what nobody should have to see. Well thats when you think you must be getting close to the end of this sick life and thank God for that.
‘I’d actually wanted her to come to London with me,’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘I was working for a magazine by this time, making better money – in the process of moving to a flat in Clapham. But, for reasons I didn’t know about at the time, she declined. I … didn’t make proper arrangements for the forwarding mail so may have missed a couple of letters from her. And then that one arrived … five months after it was posted.’
‘That does not sound good. At all.’
‘I phoned my mother straight away, and of course it had all gone wrong – Mary had been staying away for several nights at a time, and then a whole week. Having taken up, it emerged, with one of the Master House people. And taken various drugs, obviously. Possibly, judging from the letter, LSD or mescaline.’
You wouldn’t recognise me now. Youd walk past me in the street, I probably look like some old bag out the gutter. I went into Hereford once, into the shops but I could sense like a shadow behind me all the time and once it touched me and run its fingers down my back and I turned round and I screamed GET AWAY GET AWAY FROM ME and people did get away they all crossed the road thinking I was drunk or doped up and that was awful. I really need normal people not to hate me like your mum does now.
‘And your mother hadn’t told you any of this?’
‘There was … a distance between us at the time.’
Mrs Morningwood was smoking again, the room clouded, Roscoe prowling.
‘“Thinking I was doped up”,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s saying fairly categorically here that she was neither drunk nor stoned.’
‘Then what?’ Mrs Morningwood said. ‘How would you explain the rest of it?’
I went into the Cathedral but it didnt feel right, it was too big and quiet and I had to keep walking round to be near people because I dont like being on my own in a big empty place and then I found I was standing in front of the old map. You know the one called something in Latin and these disgusting things were grinning out at me and the shadow was leaning over me like when the sun suddenly goes in and you feel cold
‘The old map.’ Merrily looked up. ‘The Mappa Mundi?’
‘Displayed in the cathedral in those days.’
‘Yes.’
Hereford’s only world-class treasure. Medieval map of the world, now on view, along with the historic chained library, in a recently constructed building of their own in the cathedral grounds. Merrily had seen it a few times, never really had time to study it. Remembered the bizarre drawings around the primitive topography – a bear, a mermaid, a griffon, a unicorn. Didn’t remember any of them as grinning or obviously disgusting, but …
and I mustve screamed out or something because there was this man in black clothes and he said I’ve been watching you he said I can see your in trouble let me help you and I screamed at him GET AWAY GET AWAY GET AWAY YOUR EVIL.
I think it was just that he was in black clothes I thought he must be evil. He gave me a card to get in touch with him but I never have, whats the use.
One of the cathedral canons? Might even have been Dobbs, the exorcist.
‘She must’ve been looking a bit deranged to get that kind of approach.’
‘Evidently.’ Mrs Morningwood nodded. ‘What does it suggest to you?’
‘Extreme paranoia? Which obviously could be linked to drug use. Did the police find any acid? If she was still tripping, she might look at the Mappa Mundi, with all these mythical beasts, and it becomes like a nest of monsters or something.’
‘I’ve never seen an inventory of what they found.’
‘I could probably get some background. There’s a cop I know—’
‘No!’
Mrs Morningwood backing away, well out of the pool of light, leaving Merrily blinking.
‘Sorry?’
‘What’s the point of involving the police? They’re not going to find her now, are they? Not going to be remotely interested.’
‘Find her? I thought she was—’
‘I don’t know she’s dead. I simply never heard of her again. Nobody I know ever did. We even tracked down her mother in Birmingham. Not interested. Didn’t seem to care. Nobody cared. Except me, because I could’ve saved her. Could’ve got her out of there.’
‘But somebody obviously did …’
Mrs Morningwood’s face was grim amongst the shadows.
‘Mary came back to my mother, apparently unwell. Stayed for four days. Quiet, penitent. And … my mother would awake in the morning to hear her throwing up. Coming to the obvious conclusion. Which she put to Mary. When she got up the next morning, Mary had gone. For good.’
‘Didn’t leave a note or anything?’
‘Only this one. Which took weeks to find me. I came back at once, but of course it was all too late.’
I expect you guessed I’m writing to ask a favour. You were always so strong Muriel and I cant go back on my own.
You see I’ve got a baby now.