Woman Who Spoke to Spirits Read online

  A workbench runs all along the left-hand wall. A cupboard with a narrow door is built into the corner. A row of trestle tables stand before the rear wall facing towards her, close together, only inches between them. On them are statues, some enclosed in wrappings, some covered with what look like shells. The three at the right-hand end have rather beautiful masks over where the faces would be. Images stir inside Lily’s sluggish mind: the little figures on Ernest Stibbins’s bookends; the wonderful, beautiful statues from the ancient world in the British Museum. Is this how Ernest spends his spare time, then? Making these lifelike figures, wrapping them, varnishing them, decorating them with those gorgeous masks with their vivid colours?

  Count them, a voice says in Lily’s head. COUNT THEM. COUNT THEM!

  One, two, three, four, five, six … seven.

  Oh, God.

  She has no idea what she’s looking at, what is going on down here.

  What Ernest Stibbins has done.

  Then she hears the moan again, softer now, helpless, hopeless. Spinning round – for it comes from behind her – she sees another trestle table in a recess beneath the steps. On it, deathly white, naked, the smooth flesh innocent of every scrap of body hair, flawless, perfect, lies Albertina Stibbins.

  Her wide, frantic eyes meet Lily’s. And she mouths, Help me.

  Lily doesn’t know what to do. She puts down the lamp and lunges forward, taking Albertina’s hand. It is cold, it is slippery with oils. The fragrance is very strong here and it is centred around the still body on the table.

  ‘What has happened?’ Lily whispers.

  But it seems that Albertina cannot speak. Her eyelashes flutter; her eyes close for a few moments, then open again, very slowly, as if her eyelids were made of lead. She mouths something, but Lily cannot make out what it is. Then her eyes widen, she tries to shake her head, terror fills her face and, right behind Lily, a courteous voice says, ‘Miss Garrett! How very pleasant that you have come to see us!’

  Lily turns round and finds herself face to face with Ernest Stibbins.

  He has moved in utter silence down the steps and across the cellar floor, and now he is standing inches away. He has a cloth in his hand, and from it comes a strong chemical smell. His smiling mouth turns down in apology and, quick as a cobra, his hand flies up and he presses the cloth hard against Lily’s nose and mouth. She struggles, she kicks, she flails her arms and feels her fist connect with some bony part of his face – he grunts in pain – but whatever impregnates the cloth is far too powerful and she can feel it overcoming her. She has time to think, Felix, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I need you, and then it is as if the dreamlike state that has affected her since she walked back into the rear of the house finally takes her over. Almost with relief, she lets go and feels herself slump against him.

  She wakes up.

  Straight away she wishes she hadn’t.

  Her headache is fifty times worse. She is in total darkness, standing up very straight. Her back and her shoulders ache. When she tries to relax, to slump a little from her stiff posture, she finds she can’t. There is a brick wall behind her – she can feel its hard contours against the back of her head – and wooden planks in front of her; she smells the wood and presses the tip of her nose against it. The space from front to back is barely enough for her body. Her hands are by her sides and very tentatively, for she has no idea what she will find, she extends them outwards. Once more she touches brickwork.

  She thinks, at least I can breathe, and indeed there seems to be a steady air flow through the tight space.

  Where am I?

  She closes her eyes – not that there is any need for she is in pitch darkness – and visualizes the cellar. The trestles with the statues, Albertina’s table, the workbench, the narrow little cupboard.

  She is in the cupboard.

  He has drugged her, put her in this horrible space and shut her in. She tries to feel round the door: which side are the hinges and which side does it open? She explores with her fingers up the right-hand side and yes, there are the hinges. The means of closing the door, then, the latch – for undoubtedly there must be a latch – is on the left.

  Is it a single latch? She stares at her mental image and it seems to her she can see the one iron latch, the bar sitting snug inside its hook. Very gently she begins pushing at the left-hand edge of the door, feeling for resistance. As far as she can tell, there is just the one fastening.

  But it could just as well be a dozen, she realizes, for she is on the inside and the latch on the outside.

  She forces herself to relax.

  I have my knife, she thinks.

  For what seems the next hour or more, but is probably nowhere near as long, she occupies herself with trying to force her right hand and arm across her body and down, down towards and beyond her knees, until she can reach inside her left boot. For much of the time she doesn’t think she will do it. The space is so tight, and to get her arm in front of her she has to draw in her body so tightly that soon every muscle is aching and beginning to cramp. And in order to reach so low, she has to bend sideways. There is so little room, and already she can feel blood on the side of her forehead where her flesh has rasped repeatedly against the bricks.

  I have to get my knife, she thinks over and over. I have to get my knife.

  And at last, her agonized body screaming at her to stop, her hand is up under her skirt and her fingers grasp the end of the red leather-bound brass handle, and she draws her grandmother’s boning knife out of its sheath.

  She is still in desperate straits. She is still in great pain – the headache is the worst she has ever known, and that is saying something – terrified, dizzy and nauseous with the after-effects of whatever he used to drug her, with no idea what is happening or what the intentions of her captor may be. But having a knife in her hand makes her feel quite a lot better.

  She stands very still for some time, recovering.

  And very suddenly, shocking a small scream out of her, a light appears right in front of her face.

  It takes a few moments for her eyes to adjust from the total darkness. When they have done so, she sees the mild and kindly right eye of Ernest Stibbins peering at her through a peephole.

  ‘I apologize for dazzling you, Miss Garrett,’ he says politely. ‘Indeed, the light is not bright out here; merely a couple of oil lamps, for although they are old-fashioned now, I do love the glow they give, don’t you?’

  His eye is right there before her, with no glass insert to form a barrier, and she would flinch away if she had the space. He must have twisted aside whatever was covering the spyhole, she thinks.

  ‘Why am I in here?’ she asks. She hopes she sounds calm. Unafraid. If she does, she reflects, it’s a miracle. A feat of acting worthy of Violetta da Rosa.

  ‘Why, you are in my drying-out cupboard, Miss Garrett!’ Ernest exclaims, as if it should have been obvious. ‘To aid the process, normally a body placed in there would be packed round very firmly with a mixture of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate, which you may know as salt and baking powder, and which once upon a time, long ago, was referred to as natron.’ He pauses to think. ‘Of course, the process does not begin with the drying-out, for first, as soon as possible after death, the internal organs are removed and the brain is drawn out down the nostrils. This matter, strictly speaking, should be stored in canopic jars, for that is what the ancients did, and I am trying to ascertain if I can find a source of these beautiful objects. In the meantime, however, I dispose of it in the river.’ He pauses, then says, ‘I have been thinking of acquiring a little dog, Miss Garrett. It could potentially serve two purposes: the consumption of the offal, until such time as I manage to find some canopic jars, and, were that to prove impractical – although I would imagine, wouldn’t you, that a dog would eat human brains and organs? – the affording of the perfect excuse for late-night walks to the water, my package of body parts under my arm!’ He laughs.

  ‘The heart is re
placed with a replica made from a carved scarab,’ he continues. ‘I cannot of course obtain the real thing in Battersea, or indeed anywhere in London, and so I make my own, out of wood.’

  He sounds so self-satisfied, so proud of his resourcefulness, that Lily imagines he expects her to applaud.

  ‘Then the body cavity is thoroughly rinsed out with wine, which should, to be precise, be palm wine,’ he says, ‘although of course I have to use a substitute. Aromatic substances are placed within the space and the body is carefully and neatly sewn up. Only then does the drying process commence.’

  He pauses again, and she hears him humming as he thinks.

  Then he says, ‘Until my dear Albertina breathes her last and I can begin to deal with her body, you will not be able to replace her on the table, Miss Garrett, so in the cupboard is, I’m afraid, where you’ll stay. But don’t worry,’ he adds cheerfully, ‘for it will not be long now.’

  Lily tries to swallow her nausea and her horror.

  ‘What are you giving her?’ she says, the voice that emerges nothing like her own. ‘Laudanum?’

  ‘Yes!’ he says. ‘Well done, Miss Garrett! Not unpleasant, I assure you, as you will discover when your time comes, for it relaxes the body and brings about an increasingly deep sleep that turns into a coma and, eventually, death.’ It seems to Lily that he leans closer. ‘The bodies must be perfect, you see. No marks of violence, no unpleasant staining or contortions of the face such as might be brought about by poison. And, naturally, I have no wish to make my ladies suffer – oh, no, I’m not a sadist!’

  For a moment there is the shadow of something very dark in the eye peering in at her. Then it is gone.

  ‘And then—’ Lily swallows and tries again. ‘And then you turn the bodies into statues, with those beautiful masks over their faces?’

  ‘You like them, do you?’ The eye crinkles and she guesses he is smiling. ‘I’m so glad. The first ones were not so good, but then I was learning my art then. As indeed I was with the process itself, for I did make mistakes and sometimes a body would be despoiled. I even had to throw one that was too far gone into the river.’ He falls silent and the eye stares at her unblinking for several seconds. ‘But they are not statues, Miss Garrett. They are mummies.’

  ‘No!’ The horrified whisper forces its way out of her, yet even as she utters it she is thinking, I should have known! As soon as he described that terrible process, I ought to have realized! ‘You can’t,’ she cries, ‘you—’

  But the light goes out as abruptly as it appeared, and Lily is left in the darkness.

  She knows now how silently he moves and she has no idea whether he is still in the cellar or whether he has gone upstairs, or even out of the house. She waits, hardly breathing. Then, very faintly, she thinks she hears the front door close.

  She gets to work.

  She has had an idea, but it is an unlikely, desperate idea, and she is very doubtful whether it will work. First she will ascertain if she can open the door. She is almost certain she can’t, but it seems foolish not at least to try.

  She tries to work the tip of the knife blade into the gap between the left-hand edge of the door and the door frame. In some places – at the lowest place she can reach, for example – it just about goes in. Elsewhere – such as at the spot where the latch holds the door closed – the gap is too small.

  For some time, despair overwhelms her.

  I am stuck in here, entirely at his mercy, she thinks. He will come back when Albertina is dead, and he will push his drugged cloth into my face as he opens the door, and I will not be able to fight him as he drags me out, puts Albertina’s despoiled, mutilated body in here in my place, packs it out with natron – she is mildly surprised that she seems to have memorized the word – and puts me on the table under the stairs. Then he will begin to feed me laudanum in increasingly large doses until I too am dead and my emptied body replaces Albertina’s here in the cupboard.

  Can I stab him as he opens the door?

  Is there a chance I can surprise him and stick my knife in his heart before his drug overcomes me?

  Of course there’s a chance, she tells herself robustly.

  But it is a slim one, and equally likely that he will be on his guard. After all – she is forced to admit it – he has had plenty of practice.

  She returns to the unlikely idea.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, she gets her hand up, the knife held firmly, and tries to angle it so that the tip of the blade presses against the inside of whatever covers the spy hole.

  But there are two problems: first, the knife is too long to be easily manipulated in the space between the front and the back of her imprisoning cupboard. It will just about fit, but she is left with no room to manoeuvre and she has to hold the blade up right next to her face. It is far too sharp for such proximity; there will be little purpose in escaping from the cupboard if she slices off her face in doing so.

  And I will escape, she tells herself.

  But the other problem with the knife, even if she were prepared to risk using it, is that she doesn’t think the blade will extend far enough through the spyhole to do any good. Or any harm, from his point of view, she corrects herself. How, she wonders, can she be thinking such a thought at such a time?

  She stands still again, resting. She breathes as deeply as her stays and the confining space allow, and makes herself relax.

  Her ribs ache. She puts up a hand to rub at them.

  And feels her salvation under her fingers.

  When at last he comes back she is ready. Has been ready for a very long time, in fact.

  She still has not worked out how to open the cupboard, but that, she tells herself severely, is the next problem.

  She knows he will appear as suddenly as he did the first time, and her hand is aching from clutching so hard, her arm from being held up in front of her chest.

  Her ears strain. Was that a sound? Was that?

  And then the spyhole cover is swung away and there is the eye.

  Lily strikes, and the great roaring howl of surprise and agony tells her she has struck true.

  She waits, hardly daring to breathe. The adrenaline soars through her, making her heart beat too fast, up in her throat so that for a moment or two she thinks she will be sick.

  She can hear him sobbing in pain. He sounds like a child.

  Time passes. His sobs turn to gurgles, interspersed with long silences.

  She pushes at the door, a careful, controlled movement at first, but quickly escalating to wild panic and she begins to scream, ‘Let me out! Let me OUT! LET ME OUT!’

  And suddenly the door is open.

  Albertina stands there, supporting herself with a hand on the wall. Her naked body glows softly in the gentle light. He was right, Lily thinks, about the beauty of oil lamps.

  She stares beyond Albertina.

  Ernest Stibbins lies on the cellar floor, a pool of blood beneath his head and spreading out round it like a red halo.

  Sticking out of his right eye is a very long nail.

  SIXTEEN

  Lily knows she needs some time away from the World’s End Bureau. Away from Hob’s Court; away from the never-ending stream of journalists, policemen and the perpetually nosy general public; away from London.

  She knows Felix is trying so hard to help her, but he is not who she wants just now.

  They have worked without ceasing over the past week, both alone, the two of them bent over her desk together until late at night, and with the police.

  The full details of what Ernest Stibbins has done are slowly emerging.

  He has killed seven women, he almost killed his wife Albertina and he planned to kill Lily.

  The police have been unable to identify every mummified body, for in some cases nobody could be found to look at one of the embalmed faces, freed from their masks and their cloth wrappings and say, Yes, that is my mother, or my daughter, or my friend, or even my wife. The poignant moments when a friend or a re
lative is able to make a positive identification have apparently been even more harrowing.

  The ones whose names are now known are Gladys Hatcher, Henrietta Oakley and Rebecca Jones. The three who remain anonymous will be buried in a communal paupers’ grave with no headstone. What is the point of a headstone when nobody knows the name to inscribe on it?

  Gladys Hatcher was twenty-eight, she regularly rented a room for the night in Battersea and a discarded and much-mended stocking was found there, believed to have belonged to her. Her body was identified by a man who had once been married to her. Henrietta Oakley, known as Ettie, was sixteen. Tall, of an athletic build, she had frequently slept on the floor of another woman’s room in Battersea, and it was this woman who identified her. She had shed not a few tears over the corpse, and remarked that Ettie had said she was homesick (although the older woman didn’t know where home was) and that when Ettie went missing, she had assumed her to have gone back there. Rebecca Jones – Beckie – worked the Chelsea streets. Twenty-one years old, she came from Cardiff, whence her elder brother, his mood a mixture of rigorous disapproval of what his sister had become tempered with a flash of true grief, came to identify her body.

  Cicely Baker – the barmaid Ciss – is not among the victims. As news of the killings hit the headlines and the newspapers spread the terrible tale, she contacted the police to tell them she left London some months ago and, just as had been suggested, has indeed gone home to Yorkshire.

  There has been one more confirmed identification; rather a surprising one.

  The first body, the one at the end of the sinister row of trestle tables and the first that Ernest worked upon, lay in wrappings of the finest linen and was embalmed with a rich mix of perfumed oils, the face covered with a mask on which the features and the hair were painted with such lifelike skill that there was no doubt as to the woman’s identity.

  She was Enid Stibbins, Ernest’s first wife. She didn’t drown in the Thames when she fell from Chelsea Bridge, and it appears that Ernest must have identified the ruined corpse of some other poor unfortunate woman and claimed it was the woman for whom he mourned. She had to die, it transpired, because Ernest needed her modest inheritance to fund his obsession with the Egyptians and their mummification process. He also needed her body, of course, and he had the secret room in the cellar all ready for the moment when he took her life by holding a pillow over her face. Subduing his victims with chloroform and slowly killing them with ever-larger doses of laudanum was a refinement, for Ernest had been distressed to discover that Enid’s face bore slight damage from the pressure of the pillow.