Chapter Seventeen #2
‘She did push me,’ I tell Reacher. ‘Gave me a nasty crack on the head and I almost drowned. I can’t believe I didn’t.
I guess something wanted to keep me alive.
’ I look at Arabella significantly here.
‘If you want to contest the deed, you’re more than welcome to.
But that legal battle may have to wait until after you’re through with the murder trial.
And, believe me, those really are no fun at all.
So I’ll say it again’ – take a step forward, shoulders squared – ‘clear out of my house.’
Reacher takes another pace himself, squaring up to me at the distance of just a couple of feet. ‘Let me make one thing very clear: Harfold will never belong to you.’
Coming up behind him, Arabella reaches out a hand to touch his arm. ‘We have to be careful, Morry, we don’t want the curse to—’
‘For the love of God!’ He wheels around, forcing her to stagger back. ‘There is no curse, you imbecile. I made it up!’
Arabella doesn’t say anything for several heartbeats. Then she shakes her head. ‘No.’
‘Yes!’ Reacher presses his fingers to his temples.
‘I have had it with watching you waste the life that should belong to me. You have been given everything, Arabella, and look at what you have done with it! Diddly fucking squat.’ He turns back to me, and there’s a wildness in his eyes.
A barb of hunger. ‘My name is going on that deed, even if I have to kill you both for it.’
I jump back just in time to avoid his lunge.
There’s only space to run in one direction – through the door to the church tower.
Up the stairs. The wooden steps slam loud beneath my thundering feet.
Reacher is hot behind me, his breaths coming out as bestial growls.
I know I’m heading for a dead end at the top, but I keep going, mind racing to find an escape plan.
Reacher’s expression just now leaves me with no doubt that he really means the threat.
Legs white-hot from the ascent, I arrive on to a narrow wooden platform. The vast hulks of bells surround me like towering ships at sea. When I let my eyes journey to the edge, the dizzying drop below twists my stomach tight.
Moments later, Reacher emerges puffing up the stairs after me, his body now blocking the only way down. The only survivable way down, that is. ‘You have nowhere to go,’ he wheezes. ‘Just give me that deed and we can forget all about this. I can still help you!’
Ordinarily, his larger build means I wouldn’t like my chances against him in a brawl, but he’s less fit than I am, red in the face from the climb. Plus he’s angry, not thinking right. Both of these are things I can use to my advantage.
I take a few steps away, backing up against the wall as far as I can, drawing him out on to the platform as I do so. I’m aware of Arabella far below in the stairwell, shouting up at us, but I can’t make out her words. It’s just me and Reacher now.
‘How’s Finchley?’ I ask.
Confusion on his face, then comprehension. ‘You!’
‘Yes.’
He flies at me, fingers digging talon-like into my upper arms. I try to twist away and we struggle against each other.
I force him back a step. His breath is on my face, stale and meaty.
There are beads of sweat on his forehead from the climb.
He thrusts one hand into my breast pocket, so violent it feels at first like a punch, and manages to wrest out the piece of paper.
Holds it above his head. Takes a victorious back-step.
I’d have thought the church would’ve put a railing up here after what supposedly happened to George all those years ago, but then again, I suppose they didn’t imagine such bad luck would repeat itself.
Reacher is silent as he falls, as if he doesn’t believe it’s happening either. There’s just the crack as he hits the ground. Then a high shriek from Arabella, bouncing in echoes around the tower like the chime of a bell.
Careful as I go, I edge over to the side of the platform and peer into the gloomy stairwell below.
Reacher’s body has landed spread-eagled, his neck twisted sharply to the side.
One fist is still balled around the paper he pulled from my pocket.
A blank sheet, of course. The real deed is safe in the hands of Peggy’s brother Daniel, along with Arabella’s diaries.
I’m not stupid. As I turn to head back down to ground level, I think I see something just at the edge of my vision – a bulky form, standing up here with me.
Only my own shadow, I think. Watching in silence as it all unwinds.
That day at the Reeses’, after Dad lost his job. After I refused to play with Kenneth, found the rat poison, took it into the kitchen and made an ill-received joke. After I’d been sent out so that Mam and Dad could have their argument in peace. I passed the footman in the corridor.
‘Your daddy shouldn’t be here,’ he said.
I stuck my tongue out.
But the bastard kept going: ‘And neither should you. Do you know what I heard Mrs Reese telling her husband? That she wished he’d send you packing, too, and your mother to boot.
You’re a bad family, the lot of you. Cowards and traitors.
Criminals. She never wanted any of you working here in the first place.
Just watch: you’ll both be out on your arses as well before you know it. ’
I don’t know whether this was true or if he was just saying it to upset me, but I believed every word of it at the time, and the injustice twisted my innards.
So I waited in the garden until I saw Dad leave – about ten minutes later – and I returned to the kitchen.
It was empty: Mam must have gone to fetch something.
Moving fast before she came back, I took down the tin of arsenic from where I’d left it on the shelf.
I went through the motions in a red daze, my anger creating a sort of dream state where I was only half conscious of what I was doing.
Poison, milk, stir. Put the empty tin back where I’d left it, so Mam wouldn’t notice.
Yes, I wanted to do it, but I wasn’t thinking about what would happen next.
At no point did I imagine that it would actually be consumed. At least, that’s how I remember it.
A few seconds after I’d completed my task, I heard Mam’s footsteps coming up through the corridor. Stood back quickly from the counter.
She paused when she saw me, her cheeks blooming a frustrated pink at my disobedience. ‘And what would you be doing back in here, my girl?’ Then her eyes drifted past me, to the tea-tray. ‘You weren’t spitting in that food, were you?’
This would have been my chance to confess.
I could have stopped everything that came next.
But I didn’t know that little Kenneth was taking his tea at home.
That he’d ask, as he did every day, for a big glass of milk – the majority of the milk going to him because of it.
If I’d realized that, I would never have let that tray go upstairs.
But how could I have known it? So I just shook my head.
I’ve never admitted this to Mam and Dad, but I know that they know it. That I let them take the blame instead.
I wouldn’t reply to my letters either, if I were them.