The grey man nodded his head awkwardly.
‘He took the easier way, and quite right too. He had little to repent, apart from forty-odd years of duty to me. He chose pentobarbitone, a fast-acting barbiturate, with a little something extra. I think he waited until he was sure I’d come to no harm from you.’
‘He thought I might hurt you?’
‘He – we – couldn’t be sure how you would react to what I’ve told you. For myself, I picked a harder and slightly slower method of dying. A method intended for you, originally.’
Ash was duly shocked, but then, his murder was something he’d practically expected, even more so after this conversation with Comraich Castle’s overseer.
‘You needn’t worry, my boy,’ said his lordship, and his cheeks had begun to hollow, the bones above them becoming more prominent. The parapsychologist was certain the dying man did not have long to live. Creases in Lord Edgar’s face had deepened even more, engraving his already wrinkled countenance with a fresh criss-cross pattern of dark lines.
‘Can I do anything for you?’ Ash urged earnestly. ‘Shall I fetch Dr Pritchard?’
‘No, no . . . the deed is done, and can never be reversed, as they say. Nothing now can hold back the poison inside my body. If you could pass me what’s left . . .’
Ash quickly reached past Shawcroft-Draker for the glass. He put it into the dying man’s trembling hand almost tenderly and helped lift the tumbler to his thin lips.
‘At least it isn’t dulling my senses as much as I feared,’ said the Laird of Comraich. ‘Although by now it doesn’t do much to dull the pain, either.’
Ash changed position and sat at the laird’s feet. ‘Maybe you should have taken the same way as Byrone.’
‘He was such a loyal servant. I’m pleased he died quietly and, I hope, peacefully.’
‘Why didn’t you choose the same method?’
‘Curiosity, I suppose.’
Ash’s face was impassive.
‘So what were you planning to use to kill me off?’ Ash indicated the now empty glass.
‘Saxitoxin. The effects of that take thirty minutes after ingestion to begin working. It presents all kinds of severe symptoms: tingling, a floating sensation, muscle weakness, vertigo, respiratory failure, paralysis, and finally cranial nerve dysfunction. All very unpleasant and exactly what is beginning to happen to me. Undetectable in an autopsy unless you know exactly what to look for. I’d chosen it especially for you.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Ash grimly. ‘What were you going to do with my body?’
Instead of answering his question directly, the older man went off at a tangent. ‘We knew you’d been an alcoholic, but then we were made aware of the reasons behind your dependency.’
Kate must have told Maseby about Grace, he thought.
‘So that’s why I’ve been offered drinks all the time, right from the journey here onwards.’
‘Correct.’
‘You got one thing wrong. I’m not really an alcoholic. Yeah, yeah, I know most alcoholics say that, but I only drink hard liquor for particular reasons. I think if I told you, you’d quite understand.’
‘I’m sure I would; I know your history.’
‘So, your plan was to find out from me the reasons behind Comraich’s haunting, get me drunk on your doctored whisky and then ask if I’d like a tour of the battlements, during which I’d “accidentally” fall over the edge. Should my body ever be found, all the autopsy would reveal would be a very fine single malt, which would convince everyone my death was a drunken accident.’ Everyone but Kate McCarrick, he thought to himself.
Ash sat back in his armchair opposite the dying man.
‘You’re very astute, Mr Ash.’
‘It’s still an elaborate way to murder me. Why poison me if you were going to throw me off the cliff anyway?’
Lord Edgar was drawing in shallow, rapid breaths. ‘The Inner Court is meticulous with its plans. We couldn’t know what fight you w-would have p-put up if not poisoned first. That was Sir Victor’s idea.’
Wouldn’t you know it? thought Ash. He saw that the drug was beginning to work on the man opposite him, whose thin hands clutched the chair’s arms. He realized Shawcroft-Draker wouldn’t be capable of coherent speech for much longer.
Leaning forward in his seat, his wrists resting on his knees, Ash asked in a grim voice, ‘Why the change of plan? Why did you take the poison rather than give it to me?’
The laird lifted his head and peered down his nose at the investigator as if he didn’t know who the man was. But then he seemed to gather himself and Ash realized that the symptoms were arriving in spasms.
‘You might call it an epiphany, Mr Ash.’
The investigator was surprised at the old man’s clear diction.
‘When I learned my cancer was incurable, it set me to thinking about my life and how I’d used it. How I’d used people. I think the decision was made the moment I saw you when you first came to Comraich. I realized you were a comparatively young man with many years of life ahead of him. It was then I made the decision about my own life, and for the first time I realized how I’d abused it by protecting and giving succour to so many criminals, despots, and even dictators who were forced to run and hide from their own countrymen, stealing all the wealth from their people while babies died of disease and malnutrition.’
A shudder ran through him and he weakly lifted a hand to let Ash know he was still all right.
‘Would you like me to get you more morphine?’ Ash asked.
‘No, that’s very kind, but it can do no more for me. I just wanted time enough to explain my loathing for all I’ve done. I’m afraid that you’re my stand-in confessor in Byrone’s absence. Many a night since my illness was diagnosed we’ve spent in this room discussing the error of our ways.’
He shook his head while maintaining a faint smile.
‘We served together in the Second World War – he was my sergeant – and have known each other since. He was a friend, more than just a butler, although he never once stepped over the line. Even when I told him I would end my life in my own way, rather than let the cancer take me, he did not try to deter me. Far from it – he asked permission to die with me. How’s that for loyalty, eh? A passing breed as far as this world is concerned.’
Lord Edgar suddenly bent forward, holding his head in both hands as if to quell the dizziness. Anxiously, Ash stretched forward too, ready to catch him should he fall. Inadvertently, the ailing laird had allowed the blanket to fall away from his shoulders, and the tumour in the old man’s stomach seemed to rest on his bony upper thighs like a football.
Shawcroft-Draker covered himself again, although his movements were slow and awkward.
Ash hoped the laird would last a little longer, for there were still questions the parapsychologist wanted to ask him. He pulled his armchair closer, virtually in front of the fire, though its meagre heat posed no danger.
There were many questions Ash might have asked, but just one was uppermost in his mind: the identity of the almost transparent young man now waiting with Delphine.
‘Lord Edgar, can you tell me who “The Boy” is?’ said Ash.
78
Oleg Rinsinski lay back on the light blue Bio-Electro Magnetic Energy Regulator mattress with a big grin on his coarse, brutish face, eyebrows a thick black shagpile across the top of his nose, heavy-lidded eyes closed and yellowing stunted teeth showing through thick lips. He resembled a typical James Bond villain with his heavily stubbled chins. His hero in 007 movies always tended to be the villain of the piece. It was a great shame the recent Bond movies no longer had such stereotypical baddies. If only they made films where the bad guy who wanted to rule the world won. Now that, he could clap for.
And the girls: where were the Ingrid Pitts nowadays, the real women, who you just knew were frisky in bed, but could always keep up with the bad boys’ violence? There should be a shrine somewhere for Ingrid Pitt, somewhere he could lay
flowers to celebrate her life. If he had someone like Ingrid to watch films with, he’d be a happy man. Because she was a man’s woman, especially in those vampire movies she was so good at.
Naked and alone on the blue magnetic mat that was supposed to cure all his ills, he smiled while he thought of lovely Ingrid.
The ultra-thin filaments were already beginning to vibrate slightly, arousing him. By rights, there should have been a nurse with him to regulate the intensity, but he’d tried so often to get into their little panties that they all refused to stay in the room with him after they had set the controls.
Rinsinski forced his hairy, naked body to relax on the narrow bed with its healing mattress. A smaller, thinner mattress, was tied tightly across his chest and stomach with straps, restricting his movement. Before long he could feel a gentle tingling sensation all over his gross body.
When he’d first used the device, a doctor had told him that the magnetic therapy machine was good for stress and skin disorders, as well as arthritis, asthma, gout, osteoporosis, infertility, multiple sclerosis and tinnitus, all of which he believed he suffered from.
But today, he’d had to insist on using the machine. He was sure it also had a calming effect. He really needed that, especially after last night’s drama in the dining room. All guests had been ordered to stay in their suites for the time being, but Rinsinski was not a man to take orders. They’d finally given in, and one of the nurses had rigged him up.
After a while, dreaming of Ingrid, he began to doze – until the tingling sensation began to feel a little too intense, and then, rather uncomfortable.
Bellowing for a nurse seemed to be of no use – probably all cowering in their open-plan hutches, he reckoned. Still, they should have been able to hear him, even if the door was closed.
Growing impatient, Rinsinski tried wriggling his hirsute body to loosen the ties that now seemed tighter than when they were fitted, as if they’d shrunk and become as rigid as metal straps. The first serious pain he felt was in the big toe on his left foot, where he’d always complained he had gout. It intensified. Then, something strange: the big toe on his right foot began to tingle and hurt just as much. Still nobody answered his yells.
He struggled against the straps, but they only became tighter. He suddenly smelt burning. He lifted his head from the pillow and peered down his stocky body. Although it was difficult to see beyond his barrel chest and the smaller mattress that lay over it, he could just make out the top edge of his right foot. The skin there was smouldering. He checked the other side and that was beginning to smoulder too, a thin stream of black smoke rising from it.
This time he roared in Russian, then broken English, but still no one came to his aid.
He thrashed his head from side to side, frantically attempting to heave his body, buck his thick legs. But he could not move. It was as though he actually were magnetized to the mattress, which was becoming hotter by the moment.
‘Help!’ he cried desperately. ‘Help me at once!’
His cry was louder than ever, yet no one came.
‘My God,’ he moaned as tears began to blur his vision and to run down the sides of his thick-featured face.
Suddenly, hope! He could hear someone rattling the doorknob from outside. But the door was not opening.
‘Please!’ he begged. ‘Please someone – help!’
It was growing so hot beneath him, as if the ultra-thin filaments inside the melting mattress were red with heat. He tried to move a shoulder, but the searing plastic stuck to his skin, stretching strings of the stuff rising with his shoulder, then drawing him back like elastic so that he lay there, stuck. And the smoke was thickening, making him cough.
Someone outside was banging on the door and calling his name, but faintly, as if they were several rooms away. Yet there was no lock on the door, no windows to smash. No one to help him.
But they must, and quickly. He knew what was about to happen.
And it did.
The two mattresses, one beneath him, the other tied around his chest, broke into tiny flames, and those flames rose and danced, around him and above him where his chest hair had already singed away. And soon, all the hair on his body began to flame like a miniature forest fire.
He screamed, he twisted and turned, tears drying instantly on his jowly face. There were thumps and bangs and kicks on the door as staff tried to reach him, but they couldn’t break in even though there was no lock on the door. And the smoke rose from him as his body roasted and steamed, curling in the air like mocking spirits.
He imagined he could see ugly, delighted faces within the smoke while he cooked. Juices sizzled from his now hairless body as though he were a pig roasting on a spit.
His fat and the meat on his bones became liquid and finally burst into one great blaze. Although he screamed, the agony was momentarily gone because all the nerve endings of his neural system had burned away. But then the torment rekindled as the vicious heat found the inner nerves, nerves deep within places normally protected by flesh and bone, so that his half-choked piteous cries rang out only weakly.
As he approached death he knew there was no longer any point in screaming. It was too late now, even if the door were to be broken down.
And as his black-hearted soul fled like someone from a crazy man wielding a bloodstained axe, his final visions were not of his wife and children but of lovely, luscious, sex-goddess Ingrid. Maybe she would even be waiting for him at the golden gates, for Oleg Rinsinski in his vainglorious mind had no doubt that he was heading heavenwards.
79
‘“The Boy”,’ Ash repeated. ‘The young man called Lewis,’ he urged, anxiously pushing the conversation along before the older man expired.
‘Ah.’ Lord Edgar managed a thin-lipped smile. ‘Delphine still gets it wrong after, what? Three years?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘His name is Louis, pronounced Louie. Always has been. She just mispronounced it to begin with and we never corrected her: less chance of anyone putting two and two together, d’you see? Does that give you a clue?’
Ash shook his head.
His lordship gave the chair’s arm another thump, and it seemed to Ash that dust curled from it. The room was growing darker by the minute, encasing the two men in a shrinking cocoon of dim light. The doors leading to the battlements rattled against their frames once more. By now he could see only the dead butler’s shined shoes and the part of his trousers that almost covered his ankles; the rest of his body, still sitting in the chair, leaning at an awkward angle, was lost to the shadows.
Shawcroft-Draker suddenly began to wheeze again; he pulled a white handkerchief from beneath the tartan blanket and held it to his mouth.
‘Can I get you anything?’ Ash asked gently.
‘No, that’s very kind, but really, no. I don’t think my life will extend much longer and I should like to tell you of Louis. Even if I’ve left nothing much behind to be proud of, at least Comraich has taken care of him all these years.’
‘By keeping him in a tower room, allowed out only at night when others can’t see him?’ Ash suppressed his anger, remembering how frail the man before him was.
‘That was necessary, I’m afraid. You’ve seen his skin, how translucent it is. Before Dr Wyatt came here, he hardly ever left the tower, he was so ashamed. For twenty-odd years he never had a friend, someone he could talk to. Dr Wyatt’s arrival at Comraich changed all that. A bond developed between them.’
‘Then she knows who he is?’ Ash had leaned further forward with the intensity of the question. Had Delphine not trusted him enough to confide in him?
The other man might have scoffed: Lord Edgar’s pained breathing made it difficult to tell.
‘My boy, even Louis doesn’t know who he is. Perhaps he felt Delphine might be able to tell him.’
‘But you know.’
‘Yes, yes, of course I know. And I think it’s time he knew too. After all, he must be, what, nearly thirty b
y now.’
‘And . . . ?’ the investigator urged impatiently, for he, too, was aware that the Laird of Comraich did not have much more life in him.
Ash thought Shawcroft-Draker was choking at first, and half rose to help. Then he realized the other man was laughing through his wretched discomfort.
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry . . . Mr Ash. I don’t mean . . . to mock, but if only you knew . . .’
‘So tell me.’
‘I will, I will. But . . . but let me tell you in . . . in my own . . . way.’
They both waited, the glow of the fire diminishing by the moment in the surrounding darkness, as a candle might slowly die. The moving shadows of the room ate into the space between them.
‘Of course, you remember Princess Diana . . .’ Lord Edgar began, and Ash felt a sudden, extra chill run through him that had nothing to do with the coldness of the room, nor the wind that rattled the windows so fiercely.
The Laird of Comraich fell quiet again. Ash guiltily hoped he hadn’t lost him, not at this crucial point in the story. Then the old man began rubbing his wrist, dislodging the tartan blanket to reveal the unsightly tumour once more. ‘Strange sensation,’ he said as he continued to rub his lower arm. ‘Sort of prickling, burning. Tingling too.’
‘Princess Diana,’ Ash reminded him.
He ceased all movement. ‘Diana. Yes. Lovely girl. But, you see, she’d begun to rebel quite early in the marriage. Originally, she was forced to wear unfashionable dresses and rather silly hats. It was only later, once she began to use her own designers, that we realized how gorgeous she was. Five feet nine and beautiful with it. Flawless skin, beautiful eyes – movie-star looks, if you like.’
He swayed in his chair. Only the arms prevented him from rolling off. ‘Give me a moment,’ he murmured to the investigator, and Ash watched him as he tried to control his balance.
The Saxitoxin was taking its toll, Ash realized, and wished there was something he could do to help the man.