I was hoping for gloves, even though gloves would suggest that Abigail Aitken had killed her child and had thought up a fiendishly devious way to get away with it, but the longer I considered of such a woman hatching such a plot the more convinced I was that it could not be. It would have taken such pluck to sit there, gun in hand, waiting for the police to come and see past the surface, as far as the trick beneath it but no further. Such a strong will would be required and I just did not believe that Abigail Aitken possessed one.
Still, I would search since here I was with a chance to do so and if I found nothing I would tell the police, better trained at such things than I, to search again.
The landing seemed darker today with the large hanging lights in the atrium unlit and those dark clouds massing, so I felt around the top of the stair head for a light switch. There did not seem to be one, however, and so I began to make my way along the wall towards the switch by the lift which Bella Aitken had used that earlier day.
Halfway there though I stopped. I had suddenly remembered what had been upon this wall I was touching; the stain bright and shocking, the thin trails of blood running down to the skirting and pooling there, the slight but unignorable texture to the stain because it was not blood alone that clung there to the brown distemper. Shuddering, I scuttled sideways to the middle of the floor and walked forward blindly with my hands out in front to feel the far wall when I got there. How could it be so dark up here? Clouds or no, how could it be that I needed to feel my way?
My breath was quickening and it seemed that I could hear it inside my head, louder than it should be, as though the air around me had changed. It was thick and muffled and I could not understand, began to think that I was not where I had thought to be, that somehow I had come to a different place from that landing where Mirren died, because where was the ledge to the atrium and why could I hear my own breathing so loud and how could it be so dark at this time of day?
When my fingers touched something cold in front of me I squealed – that is the only word for it – but the darkness swallowed the sound at a gulp. Then, almost whimpering, I began to run my hands around the edge of the cold slab – it was the metal frame of the lift shaft, of course – looking for the light switch I knew was there. But where? I felt to my full arm’s reach on both sides, higher than any switch could ever be, lower too, and could not find it, and all the while the darkness was pressing against my back and the sound of my ragged breathing was growing louder, joined now by the pounding beat of blood in my ears and throat, and over and over again I felt the edge of the lift-shaft door and the raised plate of the call-button panel; I even pushed it and heard the faint ping of the call inside the lift carriage. When the sound had faded I felt around again, the edge of the shaft door and the round polished handle there and nothing else. And now I could not imagine ever finding the light switch and I could not imagine letting go and walking back through that blackness behind me to find the stairs and then, just as I let that panicky thought engulf me, just as I began to see that the only way out was to give in to terror and scream for help, sweet reason returned and half-laughing from the flood of relief through my body I grabbed the lift-shaft door handle and opened it and wrenched the door of the carriage open too and light from the lift poured out onto the landing.
I turned and rested my back against the wall, heaving deep wonderful breaths down into my lungs and panting them out again. I looked to the one side and saw the light switch, right there, blamelessly there, as why would it not be, just beyond where my frantic hands had been scrabbling. I looked to the other side and laughed at myself in earnest now. The opening onto the atrium was gone indeed; it was covered over with Aitkens’ best black velvet curtaining, tacked along the top and long enough to pool on the floor below. Of course, this dreadful place was blocked off from view – of course it was – or gawping ghouls would stand at the balcony one floor below and stare up here and point and wonder. I looked over to where Mirren had been. This time, I did not laugh and I was glad that I had stopped feeling my way along the wall before I got there. A wreath the size of a barrel was on the floor – I do not know how I missed the scent of it; lilies pumping out that choking reek like so many factory chimneys – and above, on the wall, where the stain had darkened the drab, was a patch of shining white paint, shaped like an arch so it almost looked as though a little shrine had been made there.
Suddenly I did not want to be here, grubbing around for clues on the strength of an invitation I knew I had imagined, while downstairs the girl was toasted and mourned. I stood up straight and had put one foot into the lift – I would take my chances with it on a downward journey – when I felt it start to rumble. I leapt backward, but my first panicked thought was wrong. It did not plummet; I had not witnessed its end. It was gathering itself with all its usual effort to descend with all its usual stately torpor. Mr Laming, the mending man, must be on the ground floor, and must have summoned it to him in some mysterious mechanic’s way.
Realising that when it did leave me I should be in darkness again, I stepped over and threw the light switch and when I stepped back the carriage was just beginning to move. Its floor dropped away from the landing and its ceiling began to drop down towards me. I looked away; it is most disconcerting when a part of one’s surroundings suddenly begins to sink like that, and it had given me a mild swirl of vertigo.
When I looked back again, the carriage was halfway down the opening and for a moment I had a plain view of the top of it: the heavy bolts like great steel knuckles bent against the roof of the thing, holding fast the enormous plates as thick as the palm of my hand, through which the cables groaned and thrummed.
All of that and the boy, dead and broken, lying with his legs folded under him and his head twisted round, one cheek dark and raw where it had scraped against the ropes, one hand even now dragging against the side of the shaft, making his arm jolt as the lift moved him towards my feet, carrying him away from me.
I crouched, reached out and managed just to grasp that arm. He shifted slightly, but I could not lift him clear; I could not hope to stop him dropping away. For a moment, I was almost decided to step onto the roof of the lift beside him, because I was sure I could feel a faint warmth through his sleeve and his arm moved so freely that I tried to believe it was not too late for me to help him. But then, as my hold slipped and I felt his cold hand and his icy fingers, stiffened like twigs and cracking as I clutched at them, of course I let him go.
Instead, I pulled hard on one of the ropes, trying to bring the lift back up again, but I do not even know if it was the right one and however these matters were decided, wherever they were decided inside the machine, Mr Laming on the ground floor took precedence over me. I could only stand and watch the boy getting smaller, the outlines of his broken body hidden as the dark throat of the lift shaft swallowed him, even the knocking of his hand against the wall growing indistinct until I could no longer see the movement and could not pick out the sound of it from all the other notes in the tired old song of the lift on what must surely be its last journey now.
I swung so fast down the six flights of stairs, hanging on to the banisters and wheeling past the landings, that I was dizzy by the bottom and staggering a bit as I burst out into the back of the Haberdashery Department. Over at the lift shaft, a middle-aged man in overalls under his coat looked up from where he was kneeling at an impressive toolbox and lifted his cap to me. A gormless-looking boy stood by him, who too doffed his cap. I noticed that both men wore black armbands.