Michael had not gone much further along the passage before the roof and walls began to close in, making movement more difficult. For a while he had to crouch almost on his hands and knees, and he could tell that the floor was beginning to slope steeply downwards. Once or twice, twin pinpoints of light in the distance would betoken the presence of a watchful rat, which would then scurry away at his approach. The tunnel remained dry, however, and the mortar would sometimes crumble as he brushed against it, so he was surprised when he began to hear a distinct dripping noise, irregular but insistent.
Plip. Plip. Plip.
At this point, too, a flickering light began to appear, getting stronger all the time, and the space between the walls began to broaden out. Suddenly the passage opened into what was almost a room. The roof, composed of stone flags, was supported by beams, and the four walls formed a square some sixteen feet across.
Plip. Plip.
The source of the dripping was readily apparent. The first that Michael saw of it was a fantastically enlarged shadow, dancing unsteadily in the light from a burning candle set on the floor. It was the shadow of a human body, trussed up neatly and tied by the ankles to a meat hook screwed into one of the beams. A small incision had been made in the neck, from which blood flowed in a steady trickle, across the face, down through the tangle of clotted hair, and into a heavy steel bucket which was now almost full.
Plip. Plip. Plip.
It was the body of Dorothy Winshaw; and beside it, sitting on a little three-legged stool, was her uncle Mortimer. He looked up at Michael as he emerged from the tunnel, but it was impossible to say whose eyes were more tired and expressionless: the eyes of Mortimer, or those of the frozen, slowly rotating cadaver.
Plip.
‘Is she dead?’ said Michael at last.
‘I think so,’ said the old man. ‘But it’s rather hard to say. It’s taken longer than I thought.’
‘What a horrible way to kill someone.’
Mortimer thought about this for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
Plip. Plip.
‘Mr Owen,’ Mortimer continued, speaking with great effort. ‘I do hope you aren’t going to expend any pity on members of my family. They don’t deserve it. You should know that better than anybody.’
‘Yes, but all the same …’
‘It’s too late now, in any case. What’s done is done.’
Plip. Plip. Plip.
‘We’re underneath the sitting room, in case you were wondering,’ said Mortimer. ‘If there was anybody up there now, we could hear them. I stood here some hours ago, and listened to all the fuss they made when Sloane read out the will, and they realized they weren’t going to get a penny out of me. A childish contrivance, I suppose.’ He grimaced. ‘Vain. Foolish. Like everything else.’
Plip.
Mortimer closed his eyes, as if in pain.
‘I’ve led an idle life, Mr Owen. Wasted, for the most part. I was born into money and like the rest of my family I was too selfish to want to do any good with it. Unlike them, at least, I never did anyone much harm. But I thought I might redeem myself, slightly, by doing mankind a small favour before I died. Ridding the world of a handful of vermin.’
Plip. Plip.
‘It was you, Mr Owen, who finally persuaded me. That book of yours. It gave me the idea, and suggested one or two possible … approaches. Now that it’s done, however, I must confess to a certain sense of anti-climax.’
As he spoke these words, Mortimer was toying in his right hand with a large syringe filled with clear liquid. He noticed that Michael was watching him apprehensively.
‘Oh, you needn’t worry,’ he said. ‘I don’t intend to kill you. Or Miss Barton.’ His expression seemed to soften for a moment at the mention of this name. ‘You will look after her, won’t you, Michael? She’s been good to me. And I can see that she likes you. It would make me happy, to think …’
‘Of course I will. And Tabitha, too.’
‘Tabitha?’
‘I’ll make sure that she’s not taken back to that place. I don’t know how, but — I won’t let it happen.’
Plip.
‘But you do know, of course,’ said Mortimer, ‘that she’s mad?’
Michael stared at him.
‘Oh, yes.’ He smiled distractedly. ‘Quite, quite mad.’
‘But I’ve just been talking to her. She seemed perfectly—’
‘It runs in the family, you see. Mad as hatters, queer as coots, and nutty as fruitcakes, every one of us. Because there comes a point, you know, Michael’—he leaned forward and pointed at him with the syringe—‘there comes a point, where greed and madness become practically indistinguishable. One and the same thing, you might almost say. And there comes another point, where the willingness to tolerate greed, and to live alongside it, and even to assist it, becomes a sort of madness too. Which means that we’re all stuck with it, in other words. The madness is never going to end. At least not …’ (his voice faded to a ghostly whisper) ‘… not for the living.’
Plip. Plip.
‘Take Miss Barton, for instance.’ Mortimer’s speech was starting to slur. ‘Such a kind girl. So trusting. And yet I was deceiving her all that time. My legs were in reasonable shape. A few ulcers, here and there, but nothing to stop me walking around. I simply liked to be fussed over, you see.’
Plip. Plip. Plip.
‘I’m so tired, Michael. That’s the irony of it, really. There’s only ever been one thing wrong with me, and I haven’t even mentioned it to Miss Barton. She has no idea. Can you guess what it is?’
Michael shook his head.
‘Insomnia. I can’t sleep. Can’t sleep at all. An hour or two, every now and again. Three, at the most. Ever since Rebecca died.’
Plip.
‘And what a night it’s been! It’s all been far, far too much. The exertion. I thought I’d never make it, to be frank with you.’ He slumped forward, his head in his hands. ‘I’d so like to sleep, Michael. You will help me, won’t you?’
Michael took the syringe from his outstretched hand, and watched as Mortimer rolled up his sleeve.
‘I don’t think I have the strength left in my fingers any more, that’s the pity of it. Just put me to sleep, Michael, that’s all that I ask.’
Michael looked at him, undecided.
‘Out of the kindness of your heart. Please.’
Michael took hold of Mortimer’s hand. The skin was hanging off his arms. He had the eyes of an imploring spaniel.
Plip. Plip.
‘They send dogs to sleep, don’t they? When they’re old, and sick?’
And he supposed, put like that, that it didn’t sound so bad.
CHAPTER NINE
With Gagarin to the Stars
‘No explanations,’ said Michael. ‘If you sleep, if you dream, you must accept your dreams. It’s the role of the dreamer.’
Phoebe shielded her eyes against the sunlight. ‘Sounds plausible. What does it mean?’
‘I was just thinking: there are three dreams I had when I was a kid which I can still remember clearly. And now two of them have come true: more or less.’
‘Only two? What about the third?’
Michael shrugged. ‘You can’t have everything.’
They were standing on the terrace at Winshaw Towers, looking out over the lawns, the gardens, the tarn, and the magnificent sweep of the moors beyond. Bright sunshine had succeeded the storm, although there were felled trees, fallen tiles and windswept debris everywhere to testify to its effect.