The Wolf in the Attic (16 page)

‘Don’t you got no school to go to in the morning?’

‘I don’t go to school. Miss Hawcross comes and teaches me here in the house. And if the snow is still bad in the morning she will be late, and Pa is asleep in his study, and he always rises late when that happens.’

I cannot imagine that Luca is comfortable in this freezing room with nothing but my threadbare old coat, even though his eyes are closing already.

‘Here,’ I say, and give him my blanket.

He smiles, and wraps it around his feet and legs.

‘I’ll go get you some of Pa’s clothes now,’ I say, looking at the candle. There is not much life left in it.

‘Mmmph,’ he grunts, eyes closed.

‘Will I see you in the morning?’

‘Not likely,’ he murmurs. ‘Best not.’

‘Luca, I want to go to Wytham Wood again, and talk to Queenie and sit with you all. I want to hear more of the stories. I’m not afraid. Luca?’

He is snoring quietly.

I pick up the candle, which is little more than a leaf of light in a pool of creamy wax. Then I turn and tiptoe out of the attic, the skylight still banging out above me, and the wind hurling itself at the roof like a thing demented. At the bottom of the steps, I push the cabinet back against the hidden door. It will remain my secret alone.

It is the Longest Night, the turning of the year, and it feels as though the storm is transforming the world around me with every gust of wind.

11

S
OMETHING HAS CHANGED.
I wake up late in the morning – I know it is late by the mere fact that there is daylight in the room, peeping round the drapes. For weeks now I have been getting up in the dark.

The wind has dropped, but the house is not at peace. There are voices downstairs, and as I lie there I hear the front door open and close.

It is snug and warm in the bed with Pie next to me, and I have to try and run over yesterday in my mind again. The pub, and talking to Jack and Mr Ronald, and then Luca in the attic

A day to remember. If only all days could be as interesting as that.

It is very late, and no-one has woken me up. Usually Pa comes in and out of a morning and sees that I wash my face and get dressed in time for my lessons. I suppose Miss Hawcross has cried off due to the snow, and I am to have a lovely, toasty lie-in.

Luca will be back in the woods by now, I suppose. I shall go up later in the day and check, just to be sure. Right now, no matter what I said in the night, I am quite glad that I am here in bed with Pie and not sitting on the cold forest floor in the snow.

Footsteps coming up the stairs. I am dozing off again… It must be Pa, come to wake me at last. I remember what he told me the night before, about our family, and that sends me to wondering in that delicious half-asleep way where all things are possible. I hope he will tell me more. I hope it cheers him up to think how grand our ancestors were.

There is a tiny knock on the door, not like Pa at all. Before I say anything, it is opened, and I am startled to see Miss Hawcross standing there. Her face is white except for a red nose, and she is still wearing her hat.

There is someone else behind her on the landing, because she turns to look back at them, and then nods.

‘My dear,’ she says, coming into the room, ‘I looked in on you earlier and you were fast asleep.’ She is kneading her hands together as if washing them, and her eyes are red-rimmed. She has been crying. I sit up in bed.

‘But you have to get up now, Anna. You have to be very brave.’

Is it Luca? Have they found him? I say nothing, but stare at her, and hug Pie close.

She sits down on the bed beside me and tries to take my hand, but I won’t let go of Pie. She is trying to say something, but seems to be struggling with the words. Finally, she just blurts it out.

‘Anna, your father is dead.’

Her eyes are watery, and her fingers are very cold as she sets them on mine.

‘No he’s not,’ I say, and rub my eyes, sure I am not quite awake. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I’m so sorry my dear.’ She tries to lean in and hug me but I back away until I am at the headboard.

‘He’s not dead. He tucked me in last night. He told me my real name. You’re wrong.’

‘I wish I was. It was I who found him this morning.’ She gives a little hiccup, and her voice takes on a tone I have never heard before. ‘The front door was ajar, the hall full of snow, and he was in his study. There is no mistake. Anna, you have to get up and get dressed now.’

There is a horrible hanging moment when I feel as though someone has silently slapped me across the face.

‘You’re lying!’ I spit at her, and smack away her hand. ‘He’s alive – he’s alive! My father is not dead – he’s just downstairs – and you’re lying to me! Why would you say such a thing?’

A tall dark shape enters the room behind her. It is a policeman. He has his helmet under his arm and a handlebar moustache and a silver chain and brass buttons.

‘Now young lady. You must get a hold of yourself. I don’t want to be seeing no hysterics. Miss Hawcross here will get you dressed, and then you must come downstairs and let us ask you a few questions.’

I stare up at him. The police are here in our house. A policeman is standing here in my room.

Then it must be true.

It cannot be true. I look back at Miss Hawcross.

‘No,’ I say, very quietly.

And this time when she takes me in her arms I do not fight, but bury my face in her big soft bosom, and smell her perfume, and feel the hard edge of her brooch on my cheek.

‘I don’t understand.’

I want to go back a few minutes, just a few minutes. To that moment before the door was opened. I want to have that second again, and keep it, and stay there in the warm bed with my father alive down below and the world all strange and exciting, but in its place. Everything as it was.

I want to stay in that part of the passing morning when everything was all right, and I am only a child I suppose, but I know right here and now that will never happen again, and I shall never have that feeling again.

T
HERE IS ANOTHER
policeman downstairs. The hall is tracked with footprints and melting snow. Standing in it is Matthew Bristol, and he tips his bowler at me and looks me up and down with a smirk on his sharp-edged face. He has not waxed his moustache and it looks like a wet mouse on his upper lip.

Another man comes out of Pa’s study, so that the hallway seems very crowded. He is wearing a pale trench-coat and is smoking a cigarette.

‘This is her?’ He sets a hand on my shoulder with the cigarette burning in it.

‘I want to see my father,’ I say.

‘All in good time – Anna, isn’t it? I have to ask you a few things Anna.’

I try to dart round the door but the other policeman catches me and holds me back.

‘Don’t let her in there, Brough,’ the trench-coated man says. ‘It won’t do her any good.’

‘I want to see Pa!’ I yell, and I struggle, but the policeman has me held fast. ‘There, there lass,’ he says quietly. ‘Do as the Inspector says, and we’ll all be better off.’

‘No,’ I say, and I can hear the break in my voice, but I will not cry, not in front of all these strangers, and especially not in front of Mr Bristol, who looks positively bored and is not even pretending to be sorry, and I want to kick him for it.

‘Let’s go down into the kitchen,’ the trench-coated man says, and the big policeman hands me to Miss Hawcross whose hands fasten onto my shoulders like chilled claws, and she steers me down the stairs to the basement. It is icy cold down there, and I can see my breath in front of me, and they make me sit at the big table where once I sat and had tea and talked to Elsie and Mrs Bramley, back in days that already seem impossibly distant.

The Inspector lights a second cigarette from the first and tosses the butt into the sink and then thrusts his hands into his pockets and puffs out grey smoke and looks at me, while Miss Hawcross holds one of my hands and strokes my hair. At least she has stopped blubbering now. I don’t want to see her tears. It is hard enough looking after my own.

‘Miss Francis,’ the Inspector says, ‘did you hear anything odd last night? People coming or going – the sounds of an argument perhaps?’ He picks a speck of tobacco off his lower lip.

I shake my head, wondering even as I do if Luca has anything to do with this, or the Roadmen he told me about.

‘It was blowing a gale last night. You can’t hear much from her room when it’s like that,’ Miss Hawcross says. I wish she would stop stroking my hair.

‘The door was not forced,’ the Inspector goes on. ‘Was your father expecting visitors? I know that he has a lot of them, due to his… activities.’

‘He’s really dead,’ I say slowly, as if I have to test out the words.

‘I’m afraid so my dear. And it is my job to fathom out how it happened.’

I look at him. ‘Did someone kill him?’

‘It looks that way, Anna.’

‘Was it the Turks?’

‘What?’ he looks at once interested and bewildered.

‘They killed everyone else. Perhaps they came here to finish the job.’

‘Turks?’ He steps forward, but Miss Hawcross raises her hand from my head.

‘It’s not what you think. Her family Inspector, back in Greece in the early twenties…’

‘Ah, yes, of course. So you said. But that is an angle we shall have to look into. This so-called committee, and the things he got up to in London –’

‘Not in front of the child,’ Miss Hawcross snaps.

‘So you heard nothing untoward last night, Anna?’ the Inspector asks me, ignoring her. He really is quite rude.

‘Nothing. I was asleep.’

‘Still, it’s only up a couple of flights of stairs,’ he says, looking hard at me.

I stroke Pie’s hair. ‘I was asleep.’

He sighs. ‘Very well then. No witnesses. This is a nasty turn of affairs and no mistake.’

‘I want to see him,’ I say.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible just yet.’

I look at Miss Hawcross, and I am fighting the tears, and I don’t want to let them go, not in front of everyone. It comes out as a cracked little whisper.

‘Please. Let me see him.’

She looks at the Inspector. ‘Let her.’

‘I’ve no wish to be giving a little girl nightmares, Miss.’

‘Not seeing can be worse than the sight of it,’ she says. And I know as clear as day that she is thinking of her own lost soldier at that moment, and how she never saw him buried.

The Inspector stands there. He takes his cigarette out of his mouth and looks at it.

‘Simkins.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Let the girl into the study. One minute, mind. And make sure she doesn’t touch anything.’

‘Yes sir.’

H
E IS LYING
on the floor, on his back. The study is snowed over with papers, books torn off the shelves, drawers hanging out of the desk. There is a broken glass lying, and the whisky bottle is on its side, empty.

His eyes are closed, and so I will never look into them again. His face is peaceful, almost surprised, and one arm is flung out as though he is pointing at the window.

He is lying in a small muddled pool of blood which has soaked into the papers littering the floor. I cannot see where it is coming from at first, until I make out the wound in the side of his chest, the darkening of the waistcoat there. It was a knife did this. A knife killed my father.

And I think of Fat Bert on Port Meadow, and Luca flinging the knife away with the blood on it, black in the moonlight, and all these things seem to whirl together in my mind like horses on a merry-go-round. Perhaps the Romani boy did this, and if that is so, then it is all my fault.

I reach out and touch Pa’s hand. It is cold and horribly solid, as though it is an effigy lying there, not the flesh and blood of my father at all. I cannot believe that the eyes will not open and he will not get up off the floor and dust himself down and check his pocket-watch.

The watch is gone, the fob hanging loose from his waistcoat. They robbed him then.

I tug on the chain, but at once the policeman behind me barks, ‘Don’t be touching that now, girl. That’s evidence that is.’

Miss Hawcross takes my shoulders again – why will she not let me alone? She tries to move me away from Pa, but I fight her, and stay on my knees beside him.

‘Why?’ I ask.

There is another voice in the room, a hateful one.

‘Keep a close eye there constable. He owed me six weeks in back rent, he did, though he wasn’t short of a few bob – all those weekends gallivanting round London with his trollops. If there’s any cash left in here, I have a claim to it – I’m owed. I want that set down fair and square.’

It is Matthew Bristol, the landlord. He is rubbing a finger along his moustache as if petting it.

‘No-one is touching nothing,’ the policeman growls. ‘This is a murder we have here, Mr Bristol.’

‘All the same –’

‘When the estate is wound up, you’ll get what you’re owed out of it, I’m sure. Now kindly step out of the room sir.’

Bristol backs away round the door, bristling. The policeman adjusts his helmet and whispers, ‘
Tosspot
.’