Chapter 24 #2
But dare I break in? I try all the doors, of course, and of course they’re locked up tight.
And I’ve got no phone. But Eric and Sarah McAllan are at Lord’s Yard and there won’t be anyone else here.
Surely. There wasn’t anyone else here either day I was here before.
Besides, if you’re letting old ladies die and hoping no one notices, you don’t employ witnesses.
By this time, I’ve found the window I’d break if I could summon the nerve to break a window. It’s a half basement, hidden from view by a bin store and a straggly hedge. What if there’s an alarm, though?
Again, I need to consider what’s going on here at the Elms. The last thing they’d want is an alarm going off and someone calling the cops or the fire brigade.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I jab my elbow hard into a pane of glass, then crouch, waiting.
Nothing happens, so I kick the shards away from around the break and, hoping I don’t cut myself on bits I’ve missed, I edge forward, hauling myself inside and then jumping down from the deep windowsill onto a concrete floor, wincing as my ankle flares again.
There’s still no alarm and I make for the door into a dimly lit passageway.
It’s damp and musty smelling, almost as bad as Lord’s, and I make sure to take shallow breaths until I find the door hiding the old servants’ stairs up to the front hall, where I stand in the middle of the floor, halfway between that covered office window and the grand staircase to the bedroom level, straining to hear any signs of stirring, any sound at all.
The smell of cigarettes is sickening and I want to kick myself for not realising no way Eric was smoking like a train in a house full of paying residents.
At least the smell fades as I make my way up the creaking steps, one hand on the polished banister and the other clenched into a fist, wishing I had tried to find a weapon.
On the landing, I start to try doors but find room after room empty, nothing but stripped single beds, their plastic-covered mattresses gleaming in the scant light from the nearest streetlamp.
When I’ve been round them all once, I retrace my steps and check inside the cheap wardrobes but find nothing but coat hangers and stale air.
There must be an attic floor, but I can’t find the door to the staircase anywhere on this landing.
I take a deep breath and go back round the main rooms again, wondering if there’s a hatch.
Wondering too what’s bothering me, beyond everything I know is bothering me.
There’s definitely something else wrong too.
In the second big bedroom, I spot what was troubling my subconscious: There’s a door in the middle of a blank wall and, trying to picture the layout of the other rooms, I can’t think what lies behind it. So, crossing my fingers for an attic stairway, I try the handle.
Then I leap backwards, with my heart hammering. The door is locked and on the other side of it, in response to the handle moving, someone lets out a weak cry.
I back up and take a run, lifting my leg on my last step and aiming the flat of my foot at the lock plate.
If the door opened towards me, I might have broken my good ankle but instead I fall through, after the crash and splintering, and find myself careering towards another of those single beds, cartwheeling my arms to try to stop but tripping, coming down hard on one knee and finishing with my panting face less than a foot from the stark-eyed, shaking, whimpering sight of Peggy March, huddled under a blanket in the dark, staring back at me and babbling.
“Help me,” she says. “Who are you? You have to help me. Help me.”
“Peggy, don’t you remember me?” I say. “Lindsay Hale, from Hawaii.”
“Help me,” she says again. “Help me.”
I get her to her feet, steadying her with both my hands, horrified by how thin she is and how bad she smells. “Can you walk? I haven’t got a phone, Peggy, and I really want to get you out of here in case they come back.”
“I can walk if you help me,” she says, but I end up half dragging and half carrying her down the stairs to the front hall.
It seems lighter than it did before and I’m suddenly convinced that there’s a car on the drive shining its headlamps in through the fanlight.
I turn to Peggy to ask her if she could try to crawl back out through that window, but I gasp when I see her face.
“What happened? You’re covered in bruises!”
“My idiot son forgot that he wouldn’t be able to sign my death certificate,” she says. “I’d have to be signed off by a doctor I’m not related to. So I hit myself—and not just my face, all over—and they’ve had to keep me alive!”
“Oh my God,” I say. “You’re amazing.” Then I say, “Oh my God!” Because from outside we have just heard the blaring, blessed, unmistakable sound of an articulated lorry’s horn, leaned on hard.
I leap forward and start unfastening bolts and flipping locks and, when I open the door, there she is, just swinging down from her cab to come and pound on the door.
“It didn’t feel right,” she says to me. Then she catches sight of Peggy. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“A good point well made,” Peggy says. “Lindsay? Can I have an arm? I think I’m going to pass out.”
“Police or hospital?” the lorry driver says after we’ve got Peggy into the cab and wrapped her in the duvet from the little bunk tucked in behind.
But something new has occurred to me. If we take her to hospital, where she most definitely belongs, and she starts telling the staff her tale, they’re going to think she’s got dementia.
Then, even if she doesn’t name her next of kin, someone on the staff’s bound to know that nice Dr. March from Glasgow, and they’ll call him, and no one’s going to stop him visiting his poor old mixed-up mum.
And if we go to the police, me soaked and muddy and apparently raving, we’ll both end up in hospital and David March might pop in to see me too.
I have no idea how I’m going to convince someone to believe me but I need to keep Peggy safe until I’ve done it.
It’s then that Peggy says, “I know I probably need a hospital, but I want to go home. If I’ve finished myself off, I want to die in my own bed.”
“Would you settle for the home of a friendly neighbour?” I ask.
“Bunny?” she says and, despite her exhaustion and frailty, the sudden sparkle in her eyes is all the answer I need.
“Can I use your phone?” I ask the driver, after I’ve told her the address and she’s said it must be her night for taking the scenic route.
“Knock yourself out,” she says.
“Police,” I tell the operator. “My name is Lindsay Hale,” I say when I’m put through. “Saint Helen’s, Dunblane. I need to report a crime. There are seven—no, six bodies buried—”
“Hello again, Lindsay,” the dispatcher says. “You having another tough night?”
“What?” I say, then it hits me. “Oh! It’s you again from when that guy was in my house? Well, he was. And I know why now.”
“You sound as if you’re driving, Lindsay. Are you driving?”
“I’m being driven,” I say.
“Because if you’re not at home, we can’t send anyone out to check on you, you know. Why don’t you go home and have a nice cup of tea, maybe a hot bath, and then phone us again if you need to? How about that, eh?”
“You don’t und—” I begin. Then I catch myself. “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll do that. Thank you.”
“You take care now, you hear?” the woman says. She’s being more patient with me than I would be, even if it’s making me want to scream. “Maybe have a word with your doctor about all this. Would you do that for me?”
I say nothing more for the rest of the journey, plotting furiously, until the lorry driver pulls right into Bunny’s turning circle and deposits us practically out on the doorstep.
“And I’m to keep an eye on the news, eh?
” she says before she pulls away. I’m so shattered and so scared, so unsure whether I’m doing the right thing, so unable to decide what to do next, I don’t even ask her name. I just watch her go.
We don’t have to ring the bell, of course, after the racket the lorry made.
“Who’s there?” Bunny shouts through the door, sounding fierce and brave but with a tremor underneath it.
“It’s me, Bunny,” I say. “Lindsay. I’m sorry it’s so late. Can I come in?”
He takes a good old while to unlock and unbolt the door and even longer to haul it open and peer round it at us. “Lindsay, what the dev—?” he says, then his eyes land on Peggy.
“There’s no time to explain,” I say, barging past him into a cluttered wood-panelled hallway and guiding Peggy into a chair. “Hot sweet tea and a little bland food,” I say. “Don’t tell anyone she’s here—anyone!—and don’t let anyone in unless I’m with them, okay? I’ll try to be as quick as I can.”
Bunny has sunk down onto his knees in front of the hall chair, his bare feet half out of his leather slippers and his old knees surely screaming in protest. He wriggles out of his dressing gown and sweeps it round Peggy’s shoulders. He looks at her with brimming eyes. “How? Where?”
“They abducted me,” she says. “They took me to show me my own grave. They tried to keep me locked up in my own house. Finally, they moved me to a nursing home to rot there.”
“Who?” says Bunny. “Why?” He turns to see if I can help him and gets another shock. “Lindsay, what happened to you? You need dry clothes.”
I don’t stay to argue. I let myself out, shout, “Lock up behind me” through the letterbox and scurry down the drive.