The Death Collector

Chapter 11

Madame Sophia seemed still in a daze. Mrs Paterson was pale and shocked, her husband blinked when the lights were relit, as if he had just woken up. Without ceremony, Husband Gerald ushered the Patersons to the door and out into the hall. Liz could hear him talking to them in a low voice — accepting their money or making an appointment for a further consultation no doubt.

‘The table,’ George said in disbelief. ‘That was incredible.’

‘Thank you,’ Liz said with a smile.

But before she could explain, Husband Gerald was back. He stood in the doorway, staring at Liz and George. He did not look happy, and he had undergone a transformation. No longer was he the dithering, ineffectual little man dancing to his wife’s instructions. To George, the man seemed bigger than before. His eyes were cold and hard.

‘How much of that was real?’ he asked.

George frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know very well what I mean,’ he snapped back. ‘But I wasn’t asking you. Sophia?’

‘Oh the spirits came,’ Madame Sophia told him. She still seemed to be in a state of near rapture. ‘No doubt about it. They touched my mind — just like in the old days. Just like they used to.’

‘Are you telling me you really used to be able to communicate with the spirit world?’ Liz asked.

‘But of course. Though you must be very powerful, my dear.’ She got up from the table and walked slowly towards Liz and George. There was something menacing about her movement. ‘Very powerful indeed to levitate the table like that. I know it wasn’t me.’

‘It wasn’t me either,’ Liz said quietly. ‘The table didn’t levitate.’

Husband Gerald was nodding as if he had guessed as much. But it was news to George.

‘People will believe what they want to,’ Liz admitted. ‘I told you the table was levitating and that was what you, and that poor gullible Mrs Paterson wanted to hear. It didn’t lift at all really.’

‘Oh,’ Madame Sophia said quietly. ‘So it was a trick. That really is most unfair.’

Liz gave a short humourless laugh. ‘It’s all right for you to trick Mrs Paterson, though isn’t it? How much did you want from her? How much does it cost to believe you’re communing with the spirits of lost loved ones?’

‘That’s no concern of yours,’ Gerald told her sharply. He was standing in the doorway and he did not look like he was going to move for them.

‘I think it’s time we were leaving,’ George said. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the evening, but he was sure he wanted to get out of this house as soon as he possibly could.

‘Oh I think you should stay a while yet,’ Gerald said. His voice was low and threatening. ‘My wife has some questions she would like to put to you. If you really do have the ability …’

‘We don’t,’ Liz said. ‘Look, I’m not sure what happened there with the glass and the letters, but it was nothing to do with us.’

‘His spirit felt so strong,’ Sophia said. ‘I could feel it here, almost in the room with us. You have to tell me how you made such close contact.’

George was beginning to think he would have to physically move Gerald out of the doorway. He hoped the man wouldn’t call for help from some burly servant or claim he had been assaulted. ‘Let us pass, please,’ George said in what he hoped was a menacing voice.

‘No,’ Gerald insisted. ‘You came here under false pretences, and obviously under false names. You are not leaving until we have a satisfactory explanation of your conduct this evening.’

George looked at Liz, and he could see in her face that she was ready for whatever unpleasantness might follow.

But before either of them could do anything, there came an urgent shout:

‘Fire!’

George flinched. For a moment he thought Gerald was ordering them to be shot. But the shout had come from outside the room — loud and urgent.

‘There’s a fire. Everyone out, quick. Get the brigade! Hurry!’

Distracted, both Sophia and Gerald turned towards the sound. Coiled up and ready to move, George did not waste the moment. He shoved Gerald aside, out of the doorway. Liz was with him immediately, and together they ran down the hall to the front door. A maid was already there, pulling the bolt across and unlocking the door.

‘Where’s the fire?’ she asked, her eyes wide with anxiety. She looked deathly pale. ‘Where’s Mrs White?’

George did not pause to answer. He heaved open the door and dragged Liz through. They did not stop running until they reached the end of the street.

‘Theatre?’ The surprise was evident in George’s tone.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Liz demanded, at once on the defensive.

‘Nothing. I was surprised, that’s all. Though …’ He shrugged and walked on.

‘Though what?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Though, I suppose I shouldn’t be. Not after tonight’s performance.’ He paused under a lamp-post, grinning in the diffuse light. ‘I was quite taken in by that table routine, you know.’

Liz glanced back as they walked on. Just for a second she had thought there was someone behind them. Someone following. But she could see no one, and hear nothing save the distant chimes of a clock and the clatter of a carriage in a nearby street.

‘I’ve never really been interested in the theatre,’ George was saying. ‘Well, not really. Not the plays anyway. I’m interested in the mechanisms.’

‘Mechanisms?’

‘The way the curtains are operated. The manner in which scenery is changed, backcloths dropped in. Trap doors. That sort of thing. I am an engineer, after all.’

‘You might be able to help with a theatrical mechanism of ours, actually,’ Liz realised. ‘Mr Jessop, our producer, is having some trouble with an ashtray.’

‘An ashtray?’

‘A silver ashtray. It has to fly across the stage from a table and land in a person’s lap several yards away. It is presenting something of a problem.’

George thought about this for several moments. ‘I would need to know the size and weight of the ashtray,’ he decided. ‘And the distance it must travel. But I imagine a simple spring and a hair trigger release would do the trick.’

At some point during their conversation, Liz had taken George’s arm. She was not sure exactly when this had been. She squeezed it to be sure that he had noticed.

George stiffened. ‘What was that?’ He pulled his arm gently free from hers and held up his hand to silence her. ‘I heard something. Behind us.’

‘I did think we were being followed earlier,’ Liz admitted.

‘Yes. There’s someone there, in the shadows, look.’ He raised his voice, calling: ‘Come on out, whoever you are.’

‘We know you’re there,’ Liz added, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice.

A small dark figure detached itself from a different shadow to the one Liz had been shouting at. ‘Cor blimey!’ it exclaimed. ‘It’s taken you long enough, ain’t it?’

‘I thought you promised not to leave the room,’ George spluttered.

‘I promised not to go out the door,’ Eddie corrected him. ‘And I didn’t. I climbed out the window,’ he explained, as if this was completely reasonable. ‘How was the seance then? Did you talk to the spirit of Mr Wilkes?’

‘I’m not really sure,’ George admitted. ‘It was most peculiar.’

‘The business with the glass did seem genuine somehow,’ Liz agreed, ‘though the rest of the show was trickery and illusion.’

Eddie nodded. ‘Lot of it about. So what’s this glass business, then?’

‘It spelled out letters,’ George explained. ‘Though they don’t make much sense.’

‘O R I M O,’ Liz told him.

‘Well, that’s something, innit?’

‘Hardly,’ George said, ‘we were lucky to escape an unfortunate situation.’

‘Luck was it? Eddie asked. He seemed to be trying not to laugh.

‘Yes,’ Liz told him. ‘A rather unpleasant gentleman was keen to know how to contact the spirit world. Luckily there was a fire somewhere in the house, and he was distracted.’

‘There weren’t no fire,’ Eddie said.

‘How do you know?’ George asked. ‘You weren’t there.’

Eddie coughed. ‘There weren’t no fire,’ he repeated. ‘Someone shouted fire as a distraction.’

Liz frowned. ‘But who would …’ She stopped as she realised what Eddie was telling them.

‘You were there?’ George had realised too. ‘After all we said, after what we agreed? How can we ever trust you again after this?’

‘There’s gratitude,’ Eddie complained.

Eddie had a point, Liz thought. She was angry with him too, but it was lucky that he had been there with his wits about him. She sighed, trying to explain. ‘Look, we’re grateful for the help, really we are.’

‘Don’t sound it. You never do. If Blade finds you he’s going to want his bit of paper. If he finds me, he’ll likely cut my throat. Now it seems like we got a clue from this seance and I get not a word of thanks for the idea nor for saving you at the end of it. You don’t believe I can do anything to help, though I’m in just as deep as you are. Don’t even believe I saw a monster either, do you?’

‘You were scared,’ Liz said gently. ‘It could have been a tree or anything.’

‘I know what I saw,’ Eddie said. ‘You weren’t there. But I was. You just don’t trust me.’

‘Leave him be,’ George told Liz. ‘If he’s got it into his head there’s a monster, we won’t talk him out of it.’ They continued down the street in uneasy silence.

The moon was a pale sliver of light that danced in and out of the scudding clouds. Crouched in amongst the trees, Eddie began to wonder if this was a good idea after all.

He had been angry with George and Liz when they laughed at his story about the monster. George had told him it was all his imagination. Although Liz had been sympathetic, she had agreed with George. But Eddie knew what he had seen.

Yet Liz and George weren’t interested. George had offered to walk Liz home and they had agreed to meet again tomorrow when George had a day off from the Museum. There was a mystery here that he could solve, Eddie was certain, but they just weren’t seeing it. There was a monster, and it lived near where Albert Wilkes had disappeared — in the grounds of the house where those men had taken him. That wasn’t just by chance, there had to be some connection. Well, he’d show them. He would go back, he had decided, and get proof. He didn’t know what sort of proof, but he’d find it.

That had been the plan. Now he was not so sure. He had to climb over the wall because there was a man on guard at the gate. Now he found there were more men patrolling the grounds. Eddie was shivering in the cold, hiding behind a tree and hoping the moon stayed hidden until the second man, the one guarding the house, had gone.

Eddie had seen him walking first one way then the other. The man paused to stamp his feet in the cold or to light a cigarette. In the brief flashes of thin moonlight, Eddie could see him clearly on the gravel pathway. He was stocky, his bulk emphasised by his heavy coat. A cap was pulled down low over his eyes, and over his shoulder was slung what Eddie had at first thought was a fishing rod.

But as he crept closer, he saw that it was a shotgun. Eddie quickly slunk back into the trees and wondered if he had been foolish to come here. Perhaps he should have waited until morning and tried to convince George and Liz to come with him.

‘They didn’t believe me before, they wouldn’t believe me then,’ he murmured to himself. No, it was up to Eddie to investigate on his own. He held his breath as the guard walked close in front of him and didn’t exhale again until the guard was long gone. He watched the guard disappear into the mist, waited until he could no longer hear the crunch of the man’s feet on the gravel. Then Eddie ran quickly and quietly in the opposite direction. Towards the place where he had seen the monster.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought that maybe George was right, about the monster at least. What had he really seen? A tree blowing in the breeze, its branches clutching like claws? Dark clouds hurrying across the sky?

He was running on the grass so as to make no noise. The house was a dark shape across the gravel drive that ran around it. As he came round the side of the house, Eddie could see a large room jutting out of the back as if recently added. Light was seeping round the edges of huge blacked-out windows. A thumping sound made him stop abruptly. The sound stopped too, and he realised it was his feet. He was no longer on grass.

Eddie stopped and looked down. He was on a narrow gravel path which seemed to run from the house towards the trees. Or rather, as the moon dipped out from behind the clouds, he could see it led to a small hut positioned just at the edge of the wooded area.

As he drew closer, he could see that the hut was much bigger than he thought. The whole of the front was a large wooden door with a heavy iron bar resting across brackets to keep it shut. It was too heavy for Eddie to lift.

What was behind the doors? A coal bunker perhaps? Storage for garden tools? Eddie pressed his ear to the rough wood. There was something inside. He could hear it. He strained to work out what it was. A puffing, rasping, regular rush of sound. It lasted several seconds then stopped. After a pause it came again.

The clouds parted to reveal the moon, and in the increased light Eddie glanced back — to see the guard with the gun coming round the path from the front of the house. Quickly and quietly, he slipped round the side of the hut. It was built of brick, he realised — solid and substantial. He waited a moment, then made a dash for the trees.

The man continued his patrol, oblivious to Eddie’s presence. But Eddie was not watching him. He was staring back at the dark smudge that was the hut. What had he heard? Was it the sound of a train on the underground perhaps? Maybe there was a tunnel close to the coal chute or whatever was behind the doors. Or maybe it was water rushing through a sewer.

But no matter what Eddie thought it might be, nothing could displace his first impression. The thought that it sounded like something breathing.