Thirteen Storeys Jonathan Sims Sims Jonathan

download

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-storeys-jonathan-sims-
sims-jonathan-22690106

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Thirteen Pathways Of Occult Herbalism Daniel A Schulke

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-pathways-of-occult-herbalism-
daniel-a-schulke-49316044

Thirteen Roman Defeats The Disasters That Made The Legions Ian Hughes

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-roman-defeats-the-disasters-
that-made-the-legions-ian-hughes-50884100

Thirteen Persistent Economic Fallacies E Mishan

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-persistent-economic-fallacies-
e-mishan-51333492

Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts And Jeffrey Commemorative Edition 1st

Edition Ben Windham Kathryn Tucker Windham Dilcy Windham Hilley

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-tennessee-ghosts-and-jeffrey-
commemorative-edition-1st-edition-ben-windham-kathryn-tucker-windham-
dilcy-windham-hilley-51464348
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Latino Art Ilan Stavans Jorge J E Gracia

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-latino-art-
ilan-stavans-jorge-j-e-gracia-51892452

Thirteen Ways To Kill Lulabelle Rock Maud Woolf

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-ways-to-kill-lulabelle-rock-
maud-woolf-54841642

Thirteen Days Clive Ponting

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-days-clive-ponting-55730764

Thirteen Of A Kind Kind Brothers Series Book 18 Sandi Lynn

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-of-a-kind-kind-brothers-series-
book-18-sandi-lynn-56764512

Thirteen Ways To Steal A Bicycle Theft Law In The Information Age

Stuart P Green

https://ebookbell.com/product/thirteen-ways-to-steal-a-bicycle-theft-
law-in-the-information-age-stuart-p-green-57161586
 Dedication
To Sasha
You are the best of me
THIRTEEN STOREYS

Jonathan Sims

GOLLANCZ
LONDON
 Contents

Dedication
Prologue
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th
10th
11th
12th
13th
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Credits
Copyright
 Prologue

LEGACY OF A BUTCHERED BILLIONAIRE:

THE LIFE AND DISMEMBERMENT OF TOBIAS FELL
David Erikson,
Crime Editor
Five years on, it’s an all-to-familiar cliché that the only thing more
interesting than the life of Tobias Fell was his death. For most of his
eventful career, he was lauded by the public as an entrepreneurial titan; it’s
no secret he remains The Sunday ******** ’s most interviewed non-
political figure, and we certainly weren’t alone in that regard, with his
picture gracing the front of The ******** Business Post no less than
fourteen times since 1992. After his death this fascination has only
increased, though it has now taken on a wholly different character. Even
for those who don’t follow such things it’s been hard to escape a relentless
tide of true crime investigations, conspiracy theories, even discussions on
paranormal forums. The brutal slaying has found its way to the top of more
than one online list of ‘creepiest unsolved murders’. Alive or dead, nobody
ever seems to tire of talking about Tobias Fell.
But there are those who never stopped digging, who never accepted the
impossible facts of this baffling case. But with so tantalising a mystery
surrounding his death, are we perhaps overlooking the darker corners of his
life?
His origins were similar to any other billionaire: he was provided with a
small fortune by his father’s family and proceeded, through luck, skill and,
many say, ruthlessness to turn it into a large fortune. But it has been noted
by many that, even by the standards of his peers, young Tobias seemed
utterly unconcerned with the ethical implications of his business practices.
While many of his more public and well-profiled enterprises (including
those covered in this very publication) were PR-friendly tech companies or
well-beloved brands, it takes very little digging to notice his most
profitable investments came from less cuddly sources: pharmaceutical
companies; gemstone mining; environmentally devastating oil extraction
and arms manufacture. There were accusations his companies were
involved in sweatshops, land seizure and slave labour, with many
progressives coming forward with their condemnations of him even when
he was still alive.
None of these accusations, however, ever truly seemed to touch Tobias
Fell. A ready wit and an instinct for keeping his distance from the less-
savoury aspects of his businesses served to keep his image clean, and well-
publicised charitable initiatives ensured nobody raised too much interest in
his tax affairs (even if many of these philanthropic projects seemed to
quietly disappear when the spotlight faded). Every eager would-be tycoon
named him their inspiration as he topped rich list after rich list.
There were plenty of reports, of course. Human rights organisations
condemned his companies’ ethics, but his books on business advice,
reputedly ghost-written, made for far easier reading. Indeed, looking
through the archives of The Sunday ******** , it’s hard not to see our own
complicity in burying many of these stories in the back pages.
When Tobias began to retreat from the public eye in the years leading up
to his death, this seemed only to cement his reputation. For every
concerned activist railing against his businesses, there were a dozen
admirers intrigued by this new mystique and the occasional long-lens
paparazzi photograph of the now-reclusive billionaire. He gradually
stepped back from running his companies, and his much-lauded
philanthropy entirely dried up. It seemed the business world’s golden boy
wished to simply spend his time hiding away in the penthouse suite of
Banyan Court, a building he commissioned.
It was often said that Banyan Court stood as a monument to everything
Tobias Fell was; both to those who held him as their idol, and to those who
hated him. A towering, thirteen-storey residential development in the heart
of Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest areas of central London. The building
burst from the old brick shell of a Victorian factory-turned-tenement and
blossomed into a grand edifice of glass and steel, a love letter to tasteful
opulence. Our own coverage of the construction (‘Billionaire makeover for
London’s poorest’, 3rd July 2004) talked of regeneration and of the project
enriching the area. But critics saw only gentrification and the displacement
of families, predictions which have largely been proven accurate.
One particular point of contention was the part of Banyan Court given
over to ‘affordable housing’. Local planning guidelines require new
residential developments to set aside a portion of their space as available to
low-income occupants, but alleged indifference by the government and
enforcement agencies led to persistent rumours about the construction
quality of some areas of the building. New residents of these affordable
homes reported cut corners, shoddy materials and fire hazards. The flats at
the back were apparently almost completely segregated from the glistening
modern facilities of the main building, and within a year left-wing blogs
began talking about the ‘hidden slum’ lurking behind the shining facade of
Banyan Court. And sitting in his pristine penthouse at the top of it all:
Tobias Fell.
But however fascinating his life may have been, his death is what most
people remember him for. It has gone down as one of the most high-profile
unsolved murders in history. The details that were released to the public
(and many details that weren’t) have been relentlessly dissected by the
media and amateur detectives, and almost no aspect of it makes sense. The
sheer brutality of the killing was breathtaking, and yet despite the fact that
the murder must have taken place inside his penthouse, none of the blood
found at the scene belonged to Tobias Fell. In fact, according to certain
leaked case files, no positive identification was ever made. The billionaire
was listed as the only victim, so why were there multiple reports from
people who saw multiple body bags being removed by the emergency
services?
Further igniting the imagination of conspiracy theorists was the matter of
the witnesses. Tobias Fell wasn’t alone when he was killed. There were
thirteen other people with him, all of whom claimed to have been attending
a dinner party at his unexpected invitation. Though not all lived in the
building, all these ‘guests’ each had some connection to Banyan Court.
Aside from a postcode, however, it seems they had nothing whatsoever in
common. An avant-garde art dealer, a local plumber, a six-year-old child
attending with her mother … Few, if any, of the guests would be those
expected at a billionaire’s banquet. Even beyond that, each guest said the
same three things: they had never met Tobias Fell before that night; they
had received an invitation without any sort of warning; and that, despite the
forensic evidence conclusively showing he must have been killed while
they were there, none of them had any idea when or how their host had
been murdered.
Despite this seemingly obvious pool of suspects, no arrests were ever
made by the Metropolitan Police and no official explanation of the killing
was ever given. In the five years since the crime, none of the police or
medical professionals who were part of the initial call or subsequent
investigation have made any comment on the record. Further fuelling
speculation of conspiracy were the strange events that occurred in and
around Banyan Court in the week leading up to Tobias Fell’s murder: the
deaths of Edith Kinney and James Andre, officially labelled natural causes
and suicide respectively, as well as the disappearance of noted activist
Diego Santi, who was last seen entering the building. Theorists have never
found a satisfying explanation for any of them.
Now, after half a decade, Banyan Court is all but abandoned. As leases
end, estate agents have been unable to find replacements, with other
residents and landlords abruptly selling or, in some cases, simply
disappearing. The once impressive building now stands silent, casting a
lonely eye over the dilapidated buildings below. A thirteen-storey
tombstone to a man whose shadow still falls as darkly as that of his
creation.
The murder of Tobias Fell remains unsolved, and it is unlikely it will ever
be known what actually happened that night, or what those thirteen ill-fated
guests truly saw.
 1st
Night Work

Violet Ng
114 Banyan Court
‘I’m sorry to hear that, it must be awful.’
Violet’s mother had always warned her against talking to strangers, of
course, but unfortunately it seemed nobody had warned them against talking
to her. She bit back her response as the old man gave a sympathetic little tilt
of the head, his lips pursed as though sharing her pain.
‘My son used to work nights as well,’ he continued, ignoring her silence.
‘He hated it. Used to say he could never get the sleep right. It’s not humane, I
reckon.’
Violet had grown up buried beneath her mother’s paranoid fear for her
safety, weighed down by a hundred cautionary tales, thinly veiled urban
legends that supposedly happened to some distant friend of the family. She’d
never even mentioned the greatest threat that apparently seemed to plague
only her: sympathetic strangers. The elderly man sat opposite was leaning
forward, clearly waiting for an answer.
‘Must have been hard,’ Violet said at last, doing her best to look anywhere
else, but the windows of the underground carriage showed only darkness. Her
mother’s tales had always started the same way, with looking a stranger in
the eye. It was her version of ‘Once upon a time’, but for ending with
someone dead in an unmarked lorry. To Violet, the greatest danger of eye
contact was that people thought you were interested in their opinions.
‘I read somewhere working a night shift can take almost a decade of your
life!’ her new friend said, relentless in his concern for her wellbeing.
‘It’s not for everyone,’ Violet replied, falling back into the rote half-answers
she always ended up using on family who decided they needed to tell her
how much she must hate working nights. It happened a lot.
‘What exactly do you do?’ the old man continued, undeterred.
Violet considered for a moment. She could try to explain it to him, how
much she loved it. She could try to vocalise that sense of being adjacent to
the world, walking through and beside it, but never quite letting it touch her.
She could tell him about her ‘lunch’ breaks, walking the streets around her
office, drinking in the 2 a.m. silence, that wonderful emptiness. Describe
watching cars and lorries slowly streaking a down the motorway towards
Reading or Basingstoke, like a slow-moving river of lights. She could try to
vocalise the almost spiritual connection she felt to the slumbering city. A city
her mother had always claimed would kill her.
‘I work on the ingestion and editorial management of syndicated media for a
large scale B2B-focused press-aggregator, ensuring licensing and copyright
compliance for future consumption in data and analytics.’
That shut him up.
Violet emerged from Whitechapel station just as the sky began to fully turn to
dawn. The early morning air was cool and refreshing, before the summer heat
really started, and she felt the first tinges of a satisfied exhaustion at the edges
of her limbs. Her eyelids were pleasantly heavy as she slowly walked home.
It wasn’t long before it loomed before her, blotting out the sunrise.
Banyan Court rose above the streets of Tower Hamlets, gazing down with a
paternalistic pity for the homeless and the struggling who simply hadn’t had
the good sense to be born rich. Violet smirked quietly to herself and walked
quickly past the shining glass front doors. They didn’t like it if you loitered.
She passed the small patches of immaculately maintained greenery and
turned down the small alleyway that ran along the side of Banyan Court.
Between the rows of huge bins far too unsightly to be left visible from the
street (and easily large enough for a dismembered body, her mother would
have said), and past the line where glass gave way to concrete and old brick.
Violet made her way to Resident Entrance B.
The small concrete courtyard was swept about once a month by the council,
but the bars over the ground floor windows prevented any attempt to keep the
glass clean. Those bars, heavy and painted a bright warning yellow, had been
added when the building was first renovated, and they had always struck
Violet as being a message, rather than a response to any actual crime. Like
the CCTV signs that became more numerous as you approached the door to
the rear apartments, no longer warning passers-by that residents were
protected by surveillance, but instead reminding the less-trusted occupants
that they were being watched.
She took a moment to breathe it all in, taking a seat on the raised section of
concrete where teenagers sometimes gathered to smoke and laugh. She
placed her hand on the cold, rough surface and closed her eyes. Her family
had never understood Violet’s decision to move to the city. The youngest of
two brothers and four sisters, raised in a warm home near the Scottish border
that had somehow always been kept immaculate, her choice of lifestyle
baffled her siblings. They had made their lives near home, with children and
dogs and wide-open sky. Violet’s existence, by comparison, was grimy and
cramped: living in a tiny, squalid flat to grind away at a pointless desk job in
a lightless office. They never understood that that was the point. Violet
secretly loved that hardscrabble urban life, skirting poverty and wearing her
fingers to the bone. It was something that her parents had once dismissed as
‘the resilience of youth’, but here she was aged thirty-one and this was still
the life she wanted. It was a part of her so deeply ingrained that no amount of
what her mother called ‘harsh reality’ could dislodge it.
She looked over the rusty basketball hoop on the nearby wall, just above the
defaced sign that had once read ‘No Ball Games’ and smiled as she
remembered one of her mother’s classic pieces of ‘reality’: the gruesome tale
of a young man who moved to London and caught the eye of a violent gang.
They killed him, of course, and played a rousing game of basketball with his
head. Her mother had read it in the paper, she claimed, but couldn’t quite
remember which one, and got quite upset when Violet gently questioned how
exactly one could dribble with a human head, which traditionally was one of
the less-bouncy pieces of sports equipment.
Violet turned away and got out her key, but Resident Entrance B apparently
hadn’t latched, and she didn’t need it. Still smiling quietly to herself as she
entered the cool of the dark hallway, she ignored the vandalised letterboxes.
Though her mother’s dire predictions of robbery, murder or kidnapping had
never come true (yet another way Violet had disappointed her), she had been
right about how harsh and ugly London was. If you couldn’t find the quiet
joy in that ugliness, it might be a bit much for some people.
The lift was working for once. She leaned heavily against the smudged
mirror, appreciating the slow journey towards her flat and ignoring the small
voice that called her lazy for not taking the stairs. Home was two cramped
and dingy bedrooms at the back of the eighth floor with a laundry list of
problems that appealed to her stubborn pride. She loved it. She and her
flatmate Marie were the last of their university friends still renting in central
London. When they’d first seen the listing, a few years ago now, Violet had
assumed the low rent must have been a mistake. The pictures had showed the
luxuriant glass frontage, with only a couple of clearly recycled stock photos
of the interior. Once they’d actually viewed the place the reality of ‘Resident
Entrance B’ became clear. It might have been the closest Violet ever got to
being in one of her mother’s stories, as they were led to the crumbling, bare
apartment by a shifty looking estate agent. But the doors never slammed shut
behind them, the bedroom wasn’t a secret kill-room, and by then Marie’s
housing situation had deteriorated to the point where being fussy simply
wasn’t an option. So, they’d had to take it. Violet would never tell her friend
how glad she was that decision was forced on them, but sometimes she
thought Marie knew.
As she quietly opened the front door, she took a moment to listen out for the
tell-tale sounds of Marie’s morning routine. Nothing. Nodding to herself,
Violet made her way towards her bedroom. Fatigue fully caught up with her
as she checked the blackout curtains and went through her bedtime routine.
She loved this flat. She loved it in that hard, proud part of her that rejected
the soft comforts of an easy life; that fragment of her soul that heard her
friends complain of city life and secretly judged them weak. Nothing worth
doing should be easy, she had always felt, and that included living.
‘He was there again yesterday.’
‘Who?’ Violet didn’t look up from her laptop.
‘That guy hanging around next door,’ Marie’s tone was low, conspiratorial,
like it always was when she was gossiping.
‘I thought he lived there.’
‘No.’ Marie shook her head. ‘The woman who lives there, she must be in
her eighties or something. This guy’s young.’
‘You do know grandchildren are a thing, right?’
‘Sure, but he’s been there three times over the last week. And I haven’t seen
her at all.’
‘Well A, she was closer to fifty, and B, I’m pretty sure she moved out. I saw
a bunch of boxes last month.’
‘Yeah, well I didn’t see any boxes. And I definitely didn’t see him move in.’
Violet put her laptop down and offered her a cup of coffee. Marie shook her
head again, gesturing to her pyjamas.
‘So, you think he killed her.’ Violet smiled at her flatmate.
‘No, that’s not—’
‘You know what that sounds like to me?’
 ‘Don’t start.’
‘Hey.’ Violet’s grin widened. ‘You’re the one proposing our new neighbour
murdered a harmless old lady and now lives there with her body, watching
you, the sweet stench of decay still clinging to his clothes.’
Marie was unimpressed
‘It’s just he keeps hanging around outside the door. I don’t like it.’
‘Why don’t you just go over and knock? Ask him if he murdered her.’
‘I don’t even know her name!’ Marie’s feigned indignation didn’t quite
cover up her genuine discomfort at the idea of actually speaking to a
neighbour.
‘Well, that’s a perfect follow-up question, isn’t it?’ Violet said, eyes locked
on their cheap Argos kettle as it gradually convinced itself to boil.
‘I just don’t like it,’ Marie repeated. ‘The hallway reeks of smoke every time
he’s been there.’
‘Well, that’s it then, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘If she hasn’t moved out, then maybe he’s staying with his grandmother, or
whatever, and she doesn’t like him smoking in the flat.’ The smell of the
instant coffee hit Violet’s nostrils and she sighed happily, looking out the
window at the evening lights below.
‘So, he does it in the corridor? Isn’t there, like, a fine for that? And what
about the smoke alarms?’
‘What about them?’
‘What, you don’t think they work?’
‘About as well as anything else in this place.’ Violet tried a sip of coffee.
Still too hot. There was silence for a moment.
‘We’re going to die in a fire, aren’t we?’ Marie said, the resignation in her
voice only half-pretend.
‘What’s this “we” you’re talking about? I’m going to work.’
Marie gave Violet a withering look, but her flatmate didn’t notice.
The front door shut behind Violet with a weighty metal click. Marie had
insisted they replace the flimsy lock with something a little more solid, and
Violet couldn’t deny that there was a certain reassurance to the sound. Their
door stood halfway down the blank and utilitarian corridor. To their right a
few flats lay between them and the intersection that led to the staircase. To
their left, three more led up to a window looking out over the urban
patchwork below, with the lift opposite the furthest one.
 There were technically two lifts beyond Resident Entrance B. One of them,
the one she’d occasionally use, was a cramped and foul-smelling thing that
seemed out of order as often as it was working. It listed the floors from G to
eleven, missing out floor six as the button had fallen off some time ago and
had never been replaced, no matter how often the lift was repaired. Violet had
got used to using the stairs, something Marie begrudgingly referred to as her
‘cardio’, while Violet simply smiled a sweet, bitter grin and told her to think
about how much worse that poor billionaire in the penthouse must have it.
It was the other lift that really captured Violet’s imagination. Through that
dingy courtyard, past the rows of iron mailboxes, empty bike rails, and just
enough snaking corridor to make a visitor doubt their way, there was a
spiralling stairwell that stretched up through the back of Banyan Court. It was
old, part of the original structure, with uneven tile steps that had clearly been
resurfaced, but not repaired. At the centre of the curving steps was an ancient
wrought-iron goods lift. Violet had no idea how old it was (turn of the
century, maybe?) or why it had been left in place when the building was
redeveloped. It should go all to the way to the penthouse. At least, it would if
it worked, something she thought unlikely given the hazard tape, the warning
signs, and the sturdy yellow padlock bigger than her hand. Marie swore that
she’d seen the thing moving once or twice, but Marie swore a lot of things,
and as far as Violet was concerned, it was nothing but a towering metal spine,
a strange relic of iron vertebrae gradually falling to rust. One of the city’s
hidden bones that she had lucked into living beside.
Violet checked down the corridor, over towards flat 116. There was nobody
there. No mysterious smoking stranger hovering menacingly between her and
the lift, waiting to catch her eye as prelude to murder. She stopped for just a
moment as she passed the door, straining her ears for any sound from inside,
but all was quiet. She wrinkled her nose as the lift arrived and headed down
towards her commute.
Work passed slowly. She had managed to leave her headphones next to her
bed and having to give her full attention to what actually amounted to eight
hours of copying and pasting text left her feeling almost comatose. She
always forgot how silent the office was. There must have been almost forty
people there, just as bored and unchallenged as she was, but the quiet of the
night shift was almost never broken, an unspoken rule that Violet had always
been in favour of, at least when she had been able to listen to her music or the
occasional podcast. But tonight it felt heavier than usual, and there were
moments it seemed almost like a physical weight, pressing down on her. She
kept realising that she was holding her breath.
It wasn’t just the dangers of the nocturnal streets her mother had warned her
about. Working nights was top of the list of things to be dreaded, according
to her. Burnout and suicide were the recurring conclusions of that strand of
story, with one memorable tale of a man who had ‘gone mad from the quiet’,
whatever that meant, and had burned down the office block with all his co-
workers inside. The thought was enough to get her through the first few
hours, as there was nothing more likely to inspire her to work harder than
proving her mother wrong.
Violet watched as the smokers got up for what must have been their third
break in as many hours, and tried to choke down the quiet anger she always
felt watching them. She couldn’t stand laziness. She knew, of course, that the
job she worked was largely pointless, just busywork to keep money
circulating between a handful of dying businesses, but that didn’t matter.
That was the work. And these people had no right to slack off, just standing
around chatting among themselves. Violet didn’t like this part of herself. She
knew her personal standards were extreme, and she shouldn’t judge other
people for not meeting them, but she couldn’t help it sometimes. She couldn’t
imagine being fulfilled as some housewife, placid and content in gentle
domesticity, terrified of the world beyond your own four walls. Work was
freedom, it was how you made your own life, and all too often she found
herself hating people who didn’t seem to appreciate that.
When the clock ticked over to half past one, Violet almost leapt up, quietly
letting her manager, a solid, unremarkable man named Bob, know that she
was taking her break. It took her less than six minutes to eat the salad pot she
had bought for lunch, and then she was out the door and into the dusty night
air of the city. She walked quickly, as if she could hurry along the relaxation,
and tried to figure out why exactly she was so on edge. There were no special
stresses at work (Bob was foretelling imminent layoffs, but he was always
going on about that), everything was fine at home (Marie had brought up
maybe wanting to move out next year, but that was a while away) and there
weren’t any money problems (the agency said rent was going up soon, but
she could afford it, just about). So why did it feel like every nerve in her body
was twisted up tight? It was as if she were about to break into a run at any
moment.
Violet was so caught up in trying to examine her mood, she didn’t notice
them standing there until she was halfway down Augustine Road. Three
figures, just at the edge of the street, no details clearly visible, all obscured by
hoods and caps and thick jackets. They could have been talking to each other,
probably were, but from where she was walking it wasn’t clear. They seemed
to just be standing there, motionless, the light of the streetlamp shining down
on them.
People were exactly what Violet wished to avoid on her late-night walks,
their messy presence always breaking through her quiet communion with the
city. Instinctively, she started to turn, to retrace her steps and find another,
more secluded route. But as she did one of the figures looked up, and his eyes
beneath the bright blue baseball cap met hers. They were young, cocky, and
even from the other end of the road she felt them judging her. He thought she
was scared of him. A tiny surge of defiance rose up inside her. This was her
city, her time, and she would not let the second-hand fears of her mother rule
her. So what if she had looked him in the eye? If they wanted to hang out late
at night in public, that was their business. There was nothing sinister to it,
nothing obvious, at least, and she was certainly in no position to criticise
them for being out late. So, she continued down Augustine Road, her
footsteps a lot louder than she remembered them. In the back of her mind
came that insistent pressure to cross the road, that urge to keep her distance,
but she fought it down, determined not to let this fear win. The man
exchanged some short words with his companions, watching her as she
walked in their direction with all the confidence she could hold on to.
Violet was now within a few feet of them and could smell the waves of body
spray covering up old joints and unwashed jeans. She ignored it, just a few
more steps and she’d be past them, she’d be at the end of the road, turning a
corner and breathing normally again. But as her eyes once again made that
briefest moment of contact with his, she saw a sudden change in them, and
her whole body spasmed in terror as he lunged at her.
‘Boo!’
It took her a second to process what he had said. The young man had
already turned back to his friends, who burst into mocking laughter, then just
as quickly returned to whatever conversation they’d been having.
Violet tried to regain her feet, but her every nerve was on fire and her legs
wouldn’t stop shaking from adrenaline. She wanted to say something, to
scream, to hit them, but it seemed like they’d already forgotten her, so instead
she just started walking again. She turned right at the end of the street and
headed immediately back to her office.
It took hours for the shaking to subside, and the work she was supposed to
be doing sat forgotten on her screen. She was so angry she could barely think,
and not at the arsehole that made her jump, but at herself for letting it get to
her. It was harmless, a joke. She was overreacting. But that didn’t do
anything to soften what she felt.
Violet left the office that morning exhausted, utterly drained, and travelled
back to Banyan Court in a daze. She felt disconnected from the space around
her, and with every step she found herself surprised that her foot landed on
solid ground. She didn’t remember the train home, and moved off the tube
like a ghost, drifting into the building and up the stairs without really taking
anything in. She only stopped for a second as she got out her keys, dimly
registering the faint scent of old tobacco. She looked listlessly to the next
door over, but it was closed. The corridor was empty as always.
She had no appetite and Marie was still asleep, so Violet quietly moved
through the darkness to her room and crawled into bed, barely remembering
to kick off her shoes. Sleep hit her like a fist, and she spent that day dreaming
of three figures whispering to each other under a street light. But no matter
how close she got, the words remained muffled and secret.
Her eyes opened slowly, groggily. How long had it been? She looked at her
clock. 8 a.m. She’d barely slept an hour and her head was pounding. No, it
was the door, Someone was knocking and—
‘Violet?’
Marie’s voice. She pulled herself slowly out of bed and opened the door a
crack. The light from the hall stung her eyes and she blinked several times
before the lights resolved themselves into the figure of her flatmate, still
wearing her pyjamas.
‘Aren’t you going to be late?’
Marie shook her head. ‘I need a favour.’
‘What?’ Violet’s stomach dropped slightly.
‘I’ve got a thing I need to be at today, but I kind of double-booked myself.’
‘I thought you had work?’
‘Yeah, like I said, double-booked. So I need to call in sick.’
Violet tried her best to suppress the little flame of rage that rose up at
Marie’s blasé tone. This certainly wasn’t the first time Marie had done this,
her approach to work was no different than it had been at university, but right
now Violet had to bite her tongue. Had Marie got her out of bed literally to
just rub her laziness in Violet’s face?
‘Say you have a migraine. That usually works.’ It took all her self- control
to keep her voice level. She just needed to sleep. She had work to do in the
evening.
‘Sure, for a day, but this might end up needing to stretch out a bit, you
know? I figure if I’m “too sick” to call in for myself, like a fever or
something, and need you to do it for me … I mean, that’s got to be most of
the week taken care of. Look, I know it bugs you, but I’d massively owe you
one.’
There was a very long moment where Violet could feel herself about to
reach for the phone in Marie’s hand. To call the office and tell them exactly
what Marie was doing. To let her feel all the consequences of her useless
shirking. But instead she just closed the door. It took all her restraint, but she
did not slam it, and she did not vocalise any of the thoughts that flooded
uninvited into her mind.
Marie knew better than to push her any further, and sleep found Violet
quickly.
The next time she woke up was to an empty flat. Marie must have been out at
whatever was so much more important than work, but Violet gave her door a
gentle knock anyway. She had no intention of apologising for earlier, she’d
been totally in the right, but given their housing situation, Violet was wary of
creating any rifts with her old friend. And today their tiny flat felt like an
oddly lonely place to wake up to silence, so she would have welcomed the
company. But there was no response, so Violet made her way to the kitchen.
The roar of the kettle grated on her in the quiet, and she noticed her right
hand shaking ever so slightly as she spooned out the coffee granules.
She was fine. There was no reason for her not to be, so she was fine. It was
times like this she’d welcome the reassuring scratch scratch scratch of a
murderer living in the walls. At least it would be some company. She
couldn’t quite bring herself to laugh at her own joke as she drank her coffee
and told herself she felt better.
There were people in the lift when it finally arrived. She’d been standing so
long in the cigarette-scented hall she’d almost written it off as broken again,
but just as she turned towards the stairway the doors started to open. Two
figures stood inside, huddled close together, facing towards the back corner
as though in close conversation, though Violet couldn’t make out what they
were saying. She tried to get a look at their faces, see if she recognised them
from around the building, but one had a thick hood pulled up over their head
and the other was turned too much away from her. Their clothes were muted,
denim and canvas, and neither seemed to be paying her any attention at all.
For some reason, the idea of stepping into that lift, slowly riding down those
eight floors next to them, filled Violet with horror. Was it because of that
arsehole from yesterday? Had one ‘boo’ left her feeling like this forever? No,
this was something else. It must be.
Perhaps she was worried it would break, trapping them all inside for four
days until they had to eat her. Again, the memory of her mother’s stories
failed to raise the usual smile. She’d just take the damn lift, she decided, but
by that time the doors were already closing again. Violet took the stairs.
Work went slowly, as it so often did. She was tired, and the machine-
dispensed coffee didn’t seem to be helping. She cycled through the strange,
synthetic menu, trying to find the one that would finally break through her
haze. Instant coffee, ‘freshbrew’ coffee, latte, they all tasted of the same
chemicals her tongue has adapted to years ago, but none of them could shift
this weariness. She found herself measuring out the work day by the
smokers’ cigarette breaks, the rise and fall of that familiar irritation as regular
as any clock. When she finally left to take her walk and passed them huddled
in the chill outside the front door, she found herself mumbling about their
laziness, but they kept their backs to her and didn’t appear to have heard.
She avoided Augustine Road, and turned once or twice when she almost
crossed paths with another late-night wanderer. She hated herself for it but
decided that having a peaceful walk was more important than proving some
sort of point. Even so, relaxation was elusive tonight, and she ended up
staying out ten minutes longer than she technically had for her break. Nobody
seemed to notice, but it bothered her.
Back at home, Marie was sullenly getting ready for work.
‘I just called in a migraine yesterday, so have to go in today.’
‘Sorry,’ Violet said. She wasn’t.
‘Oh, and your mother called, something about your uncle’s sixtieth?’
‘Thanks. I’ll call her back,’ Violet said. She wouldn’t.
In the cold, cultivated darkness of her room, Violet lay down on the bed,
trying to figure out what was wrong. Everything was fine. Everything was
normal. So why did her jaw ache from clenching her teeth? Why was she so
tired? She lay there and surrendered to sleep.
The next night was strange. Violet woke up. She must have. But there was
still that disconnection, as though she had been somehow severed from the
world. Everything was muted, and when she tried to focus on any one thing
too closely her head started to ache. Marie had clearly had a difficult day and
she did not seem inclined to chat as she ate her dinner, leaving Violet to her
breakfast: toast that didn’t want to cook right and coffee that got cold almost
as soon as it was put down. She still drank it, though, desperately trying to
grasp just a splinter more wakefulness. It was half an hour later than usual
when she finally got out of the door, and she had no idea what she might have
been doing for all that time.
She stepped out into a cloud of cigarette smoke and stopped, coughing, at
the unexpected sensation. Thrust into the real world again, if only for that
moment of physical discomfort. She looked around and, sure enough,
standing in front of the door to 116 was a young man in an old grey suit. His
shirt should have been white, but time had rendered it the same dull colour as
his jacket, and he wore it unbuttoned over the sun-darkened skin of his chest.
His curling black hair was just long enough to be dishevelled. He did not
seem to have noticed Violet leaving her flat, or her reaction to the waves of
smoke that rolled from his cigarette and curled around a peeling ‘No
Smoking’ sign. All of his attention seemed focused towards the end of the
hallway, past the lift, to where a window looked down over the night-
covered city below.
The fluorescent bulb above that window had burned out weeks before and
had not been replaced, leaving that part of the corridor shadowed and dark,
but as Violet followed the stranger’s gaze she could just about make out a
silhouette. She blinked, trying to focus on it. Somebody was there. They
seemed to be standing very still, and it wasn’t immediately clear if they were
facing away and looking out through the glass, or staring back down the
corridor.
Violet wanted to ignore them, to just cross over to the lift and go to work
(she needed to get to work). Her nerves were still alight from her encounter
two nights before. Yet there was something about the figure by the window
that made her certain that they were looking at her. Not the man with the
cigarette, her. She felt compelled to call out, greet them, assure them that she
was going to work, she was, when a hand grasped her firmly by the arm. She
spun around to see her strange neighbour shaking his head insistently.
‘Do you see them?’ he asked her, his voice thick with concern and an accent
she couldn’t quite place.
 She nodded, her mind racing. Which of her mother’s stories was this?
He seemed visibly relieved. His grip relaxed and she pulled her arm away,
instinctively stepping back. His face softened for a moment, and he
stammered out an apology. As if sensing her next question, he gestured to the
door behind him and, Violet assumed, to the old woman who lived behind it.
‘Old friend,’ he said, as though expecting this to answer all her questions,
but her head was starting to swim again, and the blood pounded through her
ears, drowning out the choking silence of that hall. She turned to leave, not
wanting to ask this stranger any more questions when her eyes flicked
instinctively back to the window and she froze. There were now two people
standing there. The second was just as much a silhouette as the first, and just
as still. Their heads leaned towards each other, as though passing some quiet
conversation, and if she strained, Violet thought could just about hear the
faintest whisper of what they were saying …
When her neighbour looked back, it took a second for him to notice the
second figure, but as he did his face contorted into a look of suspicion and
unease. He turned slowly to her, a bead of sweat rolling across his face.
‘I, uh—’ He struggled to find the words. ‘Be safe.’
Violet turned right and hurried down the stairs. Two floors down she could
still hear the figures whispering.
Violet was late to the office that night. She tried her best to collect herself, to
sit down and focus her mind on her task, but the words seemed very far away,
and the silence of the office left her floating and unsettled. Her fingers ached
before she even started typing, and the central heating felt like it was going to
smother her. Every few minutes she would catch herself listening intently, as
though straining to hear some quiet conversation, and the coffees she was
sure she had just made would be long cold. She kept drinking them, trying to
fight off a fatigue that had been building in her all night, terrified that if she
closed her eyes she would sleep. How many cups was it in her mother’s story
before the stressed office worker had a heart attack? Or was that the same one
who ended up burning down the building? They’d all started to blend
together.
She was terrified her exhaustion would show, that they would know she
wasn’t doing her work. They would all know. Every clack of the keyboard
was like a finger being drummed right onto her skull.
In spite of everything, she still tried to take her walk. Bob had leaned over
and asked her if she was planning to take her break and it was like a rope had
been cut. She almost leapt from her seat. Her steps were unsteady, and the
silent streets offered her no comfort, but the idea of staying in that office for
another second made her feel faint. At least the night air was unchanged. It
still offered that crisp reassurance that the world still lived, but she did not
walk as far as normal, nor as fast.
Augustine Road was empty. No figures standing at the other end, no
whispering strangers waiting for her. There was nothing there. So why was
she so reluctant to walk any further? Why did she already feel like she
needed to head back to work? She carried on, trying to ignore it, pushing the
possibilities from her mind, but she ended her walk soon afterwards. There
was no peace to be found in the city that night.
As she returned to the office, she saw a small crowd outside the door. The
smokers, six of them, huddled together, talking quietly. She knew they
emailed each other to orchestrate their breaks, and now they were lurking
outside, as if waiting for her, whispering to each other. Shirking. They didn’t
look up as she passed, and she had to stop herself barking at them to get back
to work. She rubbed her exhausted eyes, fingers stained with coffee and dirt,
and pushed herself back into the office.
By the time she got home to Bayan Court, she was so shot through with
bone-deep fatigue that she almost didn’t notice the flashing lights of the
ambulance parked in front of it. It was only when a round-faced woman in a
police uniform gently put a hand on her shoulder to stop her wandering,
unthinkingly, into the blue-and-white tape that she realised there was
anything out of the ordinary. Barriers hid most of the scene, but a small
streak of something dark could still be seen on the edge of the kerb. It could
have been blood. It could have been other things as well, of course, but her
mind refused to think of any, and kept circling back to blood.
‘I live here,’ Violet said, realising she had no idea what the officer had said
to her.
‘Certainly, this way please.’ The response was courteous and crisp as she
began to usher Violet towards the well-lit main entrance.
‘No. Round the back.’
The police officer stopped for a second, confused, and Violet had to limply
point to the alleyway that led to her home.
‘Right. Wait here,’ she was told, as the officer walked away, apparently
needing to check something with a colleague. Violet could have sworn she
was muttering ‘Get back to work ’ under her breath.
 She stood there, waiting, watching paramedics load a long black plastic bag
into the back of the ambulance. One of them knocked a barrier partially aside,
and for a second Violet was absolutely positive she could see, lying on the
wet ground, a bright blue baseball cap. There was no surprise in her, no shock
that he was now lying dead on the other side of London, five miles from their
last meeting. Perhaps she was just too tired.
She wondered idly which urban legend had finally got him. Maybe it was
her? Maybe that was the big twist, that the monster in the story was her. She
felt her lips fold into a single syllable as the police officer returned to lead her
round the back and into the building.
‘Boo.’
Four figures stood halfway up the stairs, just above the first floor, where the
steps curled behind the old iron lift. They wore thick jackets over dull,
unremarkable outfits as they turned towards each other, faces hidden from
view. Violet could hear them whispering to each other even before Resident
Entrance B swung shut behind her, cutting off the flashing lights that seemed
to follow her even behind the building. It was six in the morning, why were
they there?
She waited almost a full minute for the lift. It wasn’t coming. She pressed
the button again, rubbing at the tips of her fingers. They felt rough, and for a
second she could have sworn they were different, covered with callouses and
scarred blisters. She looked up at the lift, but the number hadn’t changed. She
started to feel very exposed and finally turned towards the stairway, full of
that resignation that comes with exhaustion. As she climbed she could hear
them whispering above her, but as she got closer the sound seemed to stop
and they simply stood there, silent. They didn’t turn around, and she still
couldn’t see their faces. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed through
the streets.
Violet kept on climbing, the now-quiet crowd patient and unmoving. Her
legs felt odd, their movements almost mechanical, but she didn’t stop.
Thinking about it later, it seemed to her that four people standing together
should have almost completely blocked the stairs. And yet she didn’t
remember passing them, not really. As she continued to walk, they were
simply behind her, and before she had a chance to consider it she had reached
the next floor. She turned back but they hadn’t moved. Her mind instinctively
reached for one of her mother’s stories, trying to place the feeling of unease
in a familiar context, but none came. She continued her climb, the whispers
floating up to follow her.
‘What did Bob say?’
It was already nine and Marie was late for work, but it didn’t look like she
had any intention of leaving before Violet had given her every detail.
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Hey, you use my phone, you give me the details,’ Marie insisted, doing her
best to hide genuine concern. No answer from Violet. ‘You still haven’t
found yours?’
‘No. It’s fine, I don’t need it.’
‘What the hell does that mean? Obviously you need a phone. You just had
to call in sick.’
‘I didn’t have to. I can go to work. I should go to work.’
‘Seriously. Look at you.’ Marie was firm. ‘When was the last time you slept
properly? I mean, you weren’t doing great even before a guy you knew died
outside our building.’
Violet was quiet for a moment. ‘I didn’t know him. Not really. He just—’
‘Who cares!’ Marie exploded. ‘It’s clearly messed you up. You need some
time off.’
‘OK. You’ve made your point.’
‘And?’ Marie said, gesturing to her phone, still clasped in Violet’s hand.
‘… Bob gave me the rest of the week off. So, like, three days, I guess.
Nights.’
‘Good. I told you he’d be fine with it.’
‘He wasn’t.’
‘What did he say?’ Marie’s tone was suddenly protective.
‘It’s not that.’ Violet tried to shrug. ‘I mean, he didn’t say … He kept saying
it was fine, that it sounded like it had been a real shock and that I should take
all the time I needed.’
‘But …?’
‘I could just tell. I know he thinks I’m slacking. That I’m not willing to
work.’
Marie didn’t reply.
‘Anyway, you should get going,’ Violet said, doing her best to sound
normal. ‘You don’t want another telling-off from Sandra.’
She didn’t even need to look at her to know what face Marie was pulling,
but her friend pressed on.
‘What did the cops say?’
 ‘I didn’t ask. I mean, they couldn’t tell me anything anyway, could they?’
‘Wait.’ Marie’s eyes went wide. ‘You don’t think it was him, do you? From
next door. Maybe he … y’know.’
‘Marie, please.’
‘Right, right. Sorry, it’s just … right outside. Bloody hell. We need to move.
This place is … I told you, didn’t I?’
Violet said nothing.
‘So, what’s the plan?’
‘Nothing. I just need some decent sleep.’
Marie began to nod, then stopped, her eyes focused on Violet’s mug. ‘You
alright drinking that?’
‘It’s decaf,’ Violet lied.
‘Right,’ Marie said, giving her a long steady look, before finally getting to
her feet.
Violet didn’t want to ask the next question. She wanted Marie to be out of
the door and gone, to leave her to her coffee and her vague dread, but she
couldn’t stop herself.
‘Marie …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Have you, uh, seen anyone else around the building? People who shouldn’t
be here?’
There was the look, that guarded concern she’d been desperate to avoid.
‘What do you mean? Like who?’
‘Just … People. Hanging around. Groups of them. Standing still like they’re
… I don’t know.’ She managed to stop just short of mentioning the whispers.
Marie was quiet for several seconds.
‘Violet, this isn’t one of your stories.’
‘Fuck’s sake, I know that!’ Violet rocked backwards for a second, stunned
by the strength of her own reaction. ‘It was just a question. Forget it.’
‘Fine.’ Marie was clearly upset. ‘ And no, I haven’t. I mean, I’ve seen
people, sure, but not being weird or being … “still” or whatever.’
‘OK.’ Violet tried to shrug, not wanting to meet Marie’s eye. Another pause.
‘Look, I’ve got to go. Just … take it easy, OK? Get some sleep.’
Violet didn’t answer.
The building was strange in the daytime. That quiet that dominated it when
the residents were asleep was instead replaced by a constant stream of faint
noises. Conversation, televisions, washing machines, shouting. It all came
floating through those thin walls, smothered and distorted so much it was
impossible to tell exactly where it originated. But no whispering. Violet
passed a half dozen residents on their way into or out of their flats, but
everyone was moving, travelling, on their way somewhere. All except the
workman with plumber’s tools, who stood tapping a pipe with an expression
of intense concentration. Or the young man in the Uriah Heep T-shirt, who
stopped measuring the corridor long enough to regard her with a curiosity
that made her feel strangely self-conscious. But there were no half-seen
figures huddled together, no silhouettes pressed against windows, as if
waiting for something to happen.
By the time she finally crawled into bed in the early hours of the afternoon,
Violet had walked nearly every corridor and stairway in the cramped rear of
Banyan Court. It was strange to wander its corridors in the daytime, to see the
sunlight illuminate those walls she knew so well by fluorescence felt almost
unnatural. Their comforting coldness replaced by a stifling warmth. Still,
even Violet could not deny the daylight reassured her, and by the end she
could almost dismiss that oppressive sense of wrongness, or maybe she was
just able to smother it in a thick layer of fatigue, and mask it in her aching
muscles and stiff, calloused fingers.
She opened her eyes to darkness. Had she been asleep? Her hand reached out
almost automatically, hunting for the light switch, but before she had a
chance to use it, she stopped. In an instant she was wide awake, her ears
straining to listen.
The whispering was soft and insistent, and for a brief second, she had a
terrible certainty that it was coming from her kitchen. Violet’s fingers found
the switch and the room was flooded with artificial light. She wasted no time,
fear briefly sparking into anger as she ran into the next room, but of course it
was empty, the whispers still near but now muffled and distant. Where was
Marie? Right, it was Friday, she’d probably be out for some drinks. Wait,
was it Friday? It didn’t matter, she wasn’t there. Violet took her time,
searching every inch of their tiny flat.
Marie’s door was closed. The whispering could be from in there. Was it
locked? Or maybe Marie was home, sitting and relaxing quietly, not hearing
what was going on. The privacy of their rooms was one of the cornerstones of
Violet and Marie’s living together. But Violet had to be sure. Gripping the
handle, she felt a flood of relief that it wasn’t locked, then a burst of terror at
the idea of what might be waiting inside. She opened the door.
 It was empty. Marie’s furniture was basic, practical, reflecting a life led
mostly outside the flat. But most importantly, there was nowhere for someone
to hide. Violet breathed out for what felt like the first time since she woke up.
The whispering figures weren’t inside her home. Not yet. She caught herself
at this, tried to focus: there was no reason to think they could get in there. It
had to be safe.
She dressed quickly, slipping on her shoes without bothering to properly
lace them, and headed out the door. The window at the end of the corridor
was dark and the lights of the city were faint. There was no safety for her
tonight. The thought came unbidden into Violet’s mind and she didn’t have
the energy to push it away. Perhaps her mother was right and there never had
been any safety. But none of her stories had ever gone like this, and Violet
began to search anyway.
She found three of them on the stairs heading down to the fifth floor. She
turned and walked quickly away. There was a cluster of six or seven at the
end of the corridor on the eighth, again she couldn’t bring herself to get any
closer. There were only two standing in front of the elevator on the tenth
floor, but when she turned around it was clear there were more just round the
corner. She hadn’t been counting them before, and now that she had started it
didn’t take long for her to lose track. She wanted to confront them, to demand
they tell her what was going on. This was her home, her city, they had no
right to be here. They would not make her afraid. Yet she just couldn’t
summon that defiant walk which had seen her down Augustine Road. Instead
she found herself running.
She stopped to catch her breath by a window. Looking down onto the dingy
concrete courtyard below she could make out five of them standing beneath
one of the security lights. Always facing each other, never where she could
see them clearly, their rough, practical clothes dirty and worn. She stood
there, at a fifth-floor window, watching them for nearly twenty minutes. They
didn’t move. Even from all the way up here she could hear them whispering.
What were they standing around for? Didn’t they have jobs to do? Was it
her? Were they whispering about her?
She could have stood there watching them for hours, but the trance was
broken by the sound of a door opening behind her. Violet spun to see a young
woman staring at her. It wasn’t until the woman actually started to ask her
what she was doing that Violet realised she was looking at another resident of
Banyan Court. She wanted to answer this woman, explain what was
happening, beg her for help, but couldn’t make a sound. There was a moment
of silence, each clearly waiting for the other to say something, then Violet’s
attention was seized by the sudden shriek of metal, and the clanking rattle of
an ancient mechanism.
She didn’t wait to see the other woman’s reaction and raced back down the
corridor, around a corner, past two figures mumbling softly to each other,
hunting that noise. With a lurch she realised what it was and turned back,
heading towards the spiralling central stairwell.
There were three of them inside the old wrought-iron elevator, their hands
blackened by dirt. These three almost spoke clearly, but their words were
drowned by the clanking of the lift moving. Violet felt a swell of nausea to
see those ancient metal bones in motion. She ran up the stairs, chasing the
slowly rising platform, trying to catch just a word of what they were saying.
On the twelfth floor she was forced to stop and watch as the lift continued up
into the ceiling above her. Violet felt like screaming, but she could barely
make a sound.
She staggered back towards her flat, hands clasped over her ears, desperate
to block out the whispering as she passed more groups of indistinct figures.
So many more. She wanted to ignore them all, to lock herself in and simply
wait out the night, but the door had locked behind her, as it always did, and in
her rush to leave she had neglected to take the keys. She reached instinctively
for her phone, before remembering that was lost as well, and a deep panic
began to rise in her, as the whispering began to get closer. There were dozens
of figures. Hundreds. And though they stayed still their presence seemed to
cover her like fog.
There was nothing she could do. Nowhere she could run. No one she could
call. She felt herself begin to collapse, when she caught the whiff of stale
smoke. She turned, expecting to see her neighbour standing there, but the
hallway was empty. Without stopping to think, Violet staggered over and
began to pound on the door of 116 Banyan Court. For several awful seconds
she was sure it wouldn’t open, but then she heard the click of a lock, and
there he was.
Violet couldn’t speak, couldn’t get the words out. Her throat tasted like
diesel fumes and dust. He just watched her with a look of deep pity on his
face. He smelled of old cigarettes.
‘Help .’ She almost choked on the word.
He shook his head slowly.
 ‘They are not real,’ he said, his voice filled with false resolve. ‘Don’t make
them real.’
‘What do they want?’
‘Nothing,’ the stranger said. ‘The dead are dead. Justice is for the living.’
And the door to 116 shut, leaving her alone.
Violet stood in the corridor, her fear gradually shifting into numbness, and
waited for something to happen. Sure enough the tinny chime of the lift
sounded behind her. She watched as the doors parted to reveal more
anonymous whisperers crammed inside it, so tightly there was barely room to
breathe, their backs all turned towards her. She walked slowly towards it, but
the lift doors did not close.
All at once, the mumbling cut off, and the world was quiet again. Violet’s
ears rang painfully with the silence, and she felt the anger rise inside her. The
words came to her lips, though she had no idea why.
‘Get back to work!’
She spat it like an exorcism, and the figures seemed to slump, as though
whatever spirit propelled them had been torn away. Violet’s anger vanished
as quickly as it came, and she was filled with the deepest shame she had ever
felt.
‘What is it?’ Violet pleaded. ‘What do you want to tell me?’
As one, they turned to face her, pulling down their hoods and uncovering
their heads. Their hair was matted with sweat and mineshaft dirt; their fingers
were bruised, calloused from pickaxe and assembly line and sewing needle;
they were stained with coffee and cacao. The bloody sewing thread that criss-
crossed their mouths kept their lips tight together, but now the whispered
words were clear. And Violet listened, learning how the story would end.
Marie was worried. If she’d really known anything at all about Violet’s
family she would have called them, but as it was, she had to content herself
with knocking on the locked bedroom door every few hours, asking if she
was OK, if she needed anything. The answer was always the same.
‘I’m fine. Just thinking.’
She tried again. Violet had been ‘just thinking’ for almost two days now,
and she should have been back at work yesterday. Something was definitely
wrong, and if it went on much longer Marie was going to have to call a
doctor or something. Though what that something might actually be she had
no idea. The internet didn’t seem to have an easy answer for what to do when
your best friend was having a weird breakdown. Marie had always said she
worked too hard.
Whatever was going on with her, Marie was sure that Violet would still
want to know about the invitation. She read it again to be sure, but the words
were still there, still exactly the same. It didn’t make any sense, but the thick
card and tasteful embossed lettering were impeccable. If this was a prank,
someone had spent serious money on it.
TOBIAS FELL cordially invites VIOLET NG
to attend a dinner party at 1 Banyan Court
on the evening of 16th August 2014
Penthouse access will be available through the freight elevator
She knocked on Violet’s door again, and slipped it underneath.
In the pitch darkness of her room, Violet smiled. She didn’t need the light to
know what it said. She had work to do.
 2nd
The Knock

Jésus Candido
30 Banyan Court
Tap tap tap.
The silver head of the cane hit rhythmically against the well-shined leather
of an expensive shoe, a soft but insistent sound that pervaded the near silence
of the auction hall. Jésus Candido was bored.
‘Lot 14 is next,’ the auctioneer droned on. ‘An incised ceramic bowl, judged
to originate from the Guaraní peoples, date unknown. Two hundred pounds,
starting at two hundred pounds.’
Nothing worth his time. He continued his impatient tapping. From the other
seats, eyes turned to stare at him with varying degrees of curiosity. He saw
them take in his expertly tailored bottle-green suit, the necktie with its
perfectly executed Eldredge knot, his cultivated air of disdain and disregard.
Some recognised him, whispering to companions with quietly awed
expressions. Others showed no recognition, but perhaps they would ask after
him later, and then they would learn his name. And why they should know it.
Jésus allowed himself a small smile. Between changing fashions, money-
laundering and newly minted tech billionaires looking to invest, the art
industry was a constantly changing place, and any small thing you could do
to maintain your profile as a dealer was worth it. Even a legend such as him
couldn’t afford to rest on his laurels.
‘Sold to Margot for 240 pounds,’ the auctioneer pushed through, clearly
trying to ignore Jésus’ theatrical yawn. The man certainly knew who had
decided to be seen at his auction house.
And being visible seemed about the only thing this auction was good for.
Normally Jésus did his business remotely, like the rest of the ring – his
colleagues, though perhaps ‘co-conspirators’ would be more accurate – but
he’d had a free afternoon local enough to the venue that he had succumbed to
a whim and decided to attend in person. At the very least, it was worth
showing his face once in a while. Jésus was in fact the one who had tipped
Desmond and the rest of the ring off about this auction in the first place. His
brother-in-law Antonio, a functionary in the Brazilian government, had been
alerted to a wealthy cattle farmer who had recently passed away. Apparently,
the man had owned a sizeable collection of artistic curiosities, but his family
had no appreciation for such things and had decided to auction them off in
London, where they ran much of their business.
‘Sold to William by phone for five hundred and ten pounds,’ the auctioneer
said as a rather tasteless sculpture was taken away. Jésus didn’t even
remember them bringing it out.
Still, now they were getting to an item Jésus was designated bidder for.
Perhaps this would bring a little excitement.
‘Lot 32 now, a religious figure in soapstone, believed to be the work of
Aleijadinho.’ A pause. ‘Uncertified. Starting at one thousand pounds.’
‘One thousand pounds,’ Jésus called, making his bid as instructed. To be
honest, he thought it was overpriced for what was likely a forgery. But at
least there might be some bidding drama.
‘One thousand pounds,’ the auctioneer repeated, looking around. ‘Currently
one thousand pounds.’
Silence.
‘Sold to Jésus Candido for one thousand pounds.’
This was ridiculous. He was starting to think he might actually have made a
mistake. The catalogue had been uninspiring, but to sit there and see this
parade of extremely pedestrian art made him deeply weary. The whole
auction had been like this, with the ring’s bidders picking up what they had
been assigned with a minimum of fuss and counterbids. Great news for the
ring, but dull for Jésus, and the thought that he’d have to see most of these
items again at the Knock made him almost regret bringing it to their attention.
Still, he’d bought what was required of him, so could finally make his exit.
Perhaps he’d make a performance out of it.
‘Lot 51, an intriguing untitled mixed media piece, oil and charcoal on
canvas. Artist unknown, date unknown. We’ll start at eighty pounds.’
Jésus looked at the painting and found himself sitting back down. He hadn’t
particularly marked it in the catalogue for the auction, assuming it to be just
another throwaway piece of junk from a mostly forgettable collection. A
four-by-eight mixed media piece, oil and charcoal on canvas. Abstract,
untitled, artist unknown, worth basically nothing. It had only been
highlighted by the ring because William Duphine, a new addition to their
ranks who Jésus privately considered an upstart with no taste, had been hired
to adorn a full country house. He was bulk-buying anything he thought might
work with the rest of the decor. To look at it now, though, Jésus couldn’t
imagine this painting fitting into any wider aesthetic. A tactful person might
call it unique .
Though even he had to admit seeing it was a different experience to the flat
catalogue photograph. He might as well have been looking at a different
piece entirely. It was vibrant and intoxicating, a series of bright, cascading
lines that swirled and interlocked in an apparently meaningless manner, until
your mind finally arranged it into what it was: the face of a woman. Her eyes
were vague, her mouth closed and unreadable, but smiling. The style was
crude, almost childish at points, but there was something there. Something he
wanted …
Murmuring took up around him, and he realised he had raised his hand to
bid. He wasn’t the designated buyer for this one, he knew that, and as he
lowered his hand, he had a sudden worry he’d be responsible for raising the
price.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Candido, was that a bid?’ The auctioneer seemed as surprised
as anyone.
‘Eighty,’ someone mercifully called from the back before Jésus had to come
up with an answer.
He recognised the voice, the young woman ring member Margot Lancaster
used to deliver her bids, and he breathed a sigh of relief. The ring would get
their due. Even so, he was struggling somewhat to maintain his composure.
For Jésus Candido to be seen bidding on a piece like this, no name attached,
barely worth the cost of the canvas, it was unthinkable. He was, perhaps ,
willing to compromise his artistic eye if the ring chose him to bid on a
specific piece, but aside from that he considered his bid the highest
compliment he could pay. And this piece …
It was certainly true he considered himself to have a keen eye for outsider
art, created by those without training or intent, but it was not an interest he
wished to be known for. Yet, as he did his best to relax back into a
considered indifference, he caught his hand starting to rise again and pulled it
back down before the auctioneer spotted.
He watched as the painting was carried off, sold to Margot’s bidder for a
hundred and ten. His instincts had never misled him before. The more he
thought about it, the more Jésus was certain: it would be perfect for his
private collection. He resolved to own it, William Duphine be damned. He
smiled to himself. It had been a long time since he’d actually found himself
looking forward to the Knock.
‘This the one?’ the driver called as the black cab pulled up to Banyan Court.
‘Hell of a place, this. Bet you’re not for the poor door, eh?’
‘No,’ Jésus replied, ignoring the jovial tone and ugly laugh of the taxi
driver, ‘I am not.’
He eased himself out, careful where he stepped on the streets of Tower
Hamlets. Banyan Court loomed above him. There are some buildings in this
world which exist to serve a function and have no aesthetic ambition beyond
that purpose. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that their aesthetic
ambition is to serve their purpose. Others are inviting, made to be welcoming
and familiar, and still others are made to be intimidating, austere: a reminder
to those that enter them of the power and position of their builders. But some
buildings, at least to the eyes of Jésus Candido, some buildings were art.
Many were designed as such, their beauty intricately planned by architects
of vision and skill, while others found their art accidentally, growing into it
through their decay or sculpted towards it by later extensions and changes.
Some even became art entirely by context: the tiny, ugly little church that
refused to sell its land, stubbornly existing in the heart of a business district,
walled in on all sides by fashionable glass monstrosities. You just needed to
know how to look.
‘Oi!’ the voice of the cabbie cut through his musings. ‘You forgot your
fancy cane.’
Jésus retrieved it without comment.
‘Don’t want anyone thinking you’re in the wrong door, do we?’ The driver’s
laughter was cut off by the door slamming shut.
Jésus was quite sure that Banyan Court was intended to be beautiful. There
was simply no way the interweaving of glass and steel with the aged brick of
the old tenement served any practical purpose. And certainly it was broadly
successful, that was true. But anything could be beautiful. Beauty was cheap.
Beauty was obvious . And yet he chose to live there. Not because of the
artistic merit it claimed to possess, but because of the artistic merit it had not
even considered. There it stood, a bright splinter of excess, burrowed into the
grey and dying streets of struggle and hardship, unable to even admit the
parts of itself it considered shameful. Aesthetically, it was acceptable.
Conceptually, it was art. And so, Jésus lived there.
He hadn’t argued with the cab driver because he had nothing to prove. He
understood poverty and degradation without having to actually experience it.
You don’t need to actually touch art.
‘Good evening, come in.’ Jésus tried to disguise his irritation that William
Duphine was the first to arrive for the Knock.
‘Yes, hello, Jesus! Is Desmond here yet? What are we drinking?’
Jésus did not answer. He did not care to respond to those who couldn’t be
bothered to pronounce his name right.
‘Look at this place! I should drop a line to Time Out . “The hidden gallery
that puts the Horniman to shame!”’ He leered at Jésus. ‘Did Desmond say
why it wasn’t at the Langham?’
Duphine had, predictably, picked the least interesting of the display pieces
to examine, an extremely derivative Jacob Maris piece he mostly kept around
because it seemed churlish not to have anything from the Hague School.
Desmond Uxton, the ring’s founder, had in fact had rather a nasty falling-
out with one of the managers at the Langham and had violently sworn off the
place, but that wasn’t any of William Duphine’s business, so Jésus declined
to share it.
Soon enough, the other members of the ring, including Desmond himself,
began to join them, taking their places for the bidding, each complimenting
Jésus on his home. It was true he had an almost perfect set-up for it, with the
eight usual members comfortably fitting in his spacious living room. Nobody
mentioned it, but he felt there was also a certain rightness in the fact that the
dead man whose spoils they were to bid on had actually run one of the many
companies ultimately controlled by Tobias Fell, the owner of Banyan Court
itself. All in all, the perfect venue for dividing the bounty of a fixed auction.
‘Right,’ Desmond said at last, once they were all settled. ‘Shall we go in lot
order or value? It’s all the same to me.’
‘Lot order is easier to keep track of, I think,’ declared Margot, one of the
older members of the ring, and no one disagreed, so the bidding began.
The Knock was a remarkably simple idea. It took place among members of
the ring, bidders who would normally be at each other’s throats during the
auction but had instead made an arrangement to not compete against each
other, at least no more than needed to keep up appearances. This meant some
lots could be acquired for a fraction of what they might have cost otherwise.
Of course, there were plenty of bidders who weren’t in the ring, and if they
were eager for a lot then the price could still climb higher than would be
ideal, but the ring’s pockets were deep, and they’d still recoup much of their
expenses at the Knock. Once the designated buyers had secured as many of
the pre-chosen lots as possible, a second, private auction was held among the
ring, with each member bidding on the lots that they had won. The winner
would pay off the buyer, and then pay the amount they bid at the Knock
evenly among all members of the ring. The money circulated around all
through the group in such a way that even if you spent as much on a piece
you might have paid at the auction itself, you’d recoup those losses from the
other members on the pieces you didn’t win.
It was a way of acquiring valuable pieces of art for less than they were
worth, but more than that, membership of the ring was an extremely
exclusive thing, and it helped to keep the interlopers and new money from
gaining a foothold. Art, Jésus privately believed, was not, in fact, for
everybody, and the Knock helped to keep that vital hierarchy in place. It was
also quite illegal, but that didn’t matter. They weren’t some petty consortium
of scrap metal dealers, they were people of means and power, and they
weren’t the sort of people to be touched by the law.
Still, that was hardly what concerned him today. He had a very specific
piece he was bidding on. Lot 51, he remembered it quite clearly. None of the
pieces were physically present, of course, they’d be delivered as necessary,
but his memory was quite vivid enough. It was strange, Jésus had been to so
many Knocks in his time that to find himself actually caring about one was a
remarkably novel experience. And yet, as the spoils were divided and they
came closer and closer to the painting that he still hadn’t been able to get out
of his mind, he grew nervous. Lot 46 came and went. Lot 49. What if he
wasn’t the only one who saw its potential? What if he had it snatched from
him?
As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. Nobody else at the Knock seemed
to care much about the painting at all. William Duphine put in an obligatory
bid, his expression utterly disinterested, clearly expecting to walk away with
it. When he saw Jésus raise his hand to outbid him, he stifled a small laugh.
Desmond leaned over.
‘I wouldn’t worry old man,’ he whispered to Jésus, ‘I sometimes lose track
as well.’
Jésus kept his gaze level and raised his arm higher, confirming the bid.
There were a few whispers, some wondering if they’d missed something
important about the painting, others smirking slightly, believing him to have
made his first mistake. He ignored them. They hadn’t seen it, not like he had.
He wasn’t going to lie to himself their pantomimed confusion and backbiting
didn’t get to him, but he was damned if he’d let them know it. William
shrugged, conceding the piece. And then it was done.
‘Mind me asking what got you so interested in that one?’ Desmond asked
him afterwards, once the other members of the ring had made their polite
goodbyes. They all cooperated professionally for the Knock, but he was the
only one Jésus would actually consider a friend.
‘You didn’t see it in person, did you?’ he said, releasing a plume of cigar
smoke that lazily crept its way around the balcony and out into the night air.
‘Can’t say I did. Had Müller put through my bids by phone as always. I take
it the photos don’t do it justice?’
‘They do not. It was unexpected.’
‘Bit of a mess, though, surely? Maybe as an ambience piece, but … what
exactly did you see in it?’
‘It’s … outsider art,’ Jésus said, suddenly defensive, ‘the line work, the
colours. Think of Georgiana Houghton. Or Madge Gill, perhaps.’
‘Otherworldly lines and haunted geometries, eh?’ Desmond inhaled
thoughtfully. ‘Can’t honestly say I saw anything of that in it.’
‘Well, I did.’
‘Hm. Sounds like it really called to you.’ Desmond’s tone was casual, but
the words still gave Jésus pause. He shifted uncomfortably.
‘Yes. Yes, it did.’
‘Unless you know something about it you’re not telling?’ Desmond’s smile
did its best to hide the slight edge creeping into his voice. Jésus knew that his
friend hated more than anything to feel like anyone had got one over on him.
‘No. I simply … like it.’ Jésus wanted to say more, to put into words the
feelings it stirred in him, but English was a blunt, clumsy language and he
simply couldn’t do it.
‘Well, I hope so. No way you’re going to sell it on its own, so I suppose you
better find some wall space.’
‘I shall. It’s going to be where it belongs, I think.’
Desmond shrugged and returned to his own cigar. The two of them sat in
silence, watching the thin lines of smoke twist and contort in the lights of the
city below.
It was two days later when the front desk informed Jésus that his painting had
arrived. He hurried down as fast as the elevator would allow, hoping to catch
the delivery men before they left, but they’d long since vanished by the time
he got there. Worse, the concierge working the reception was one he
particularly disliked: a lanky middle-aged man who talked to himself and
always claimed problems had been taken care of when they clearly hadn’t
been. Jésus had deliberately made the decision not to learn the man’s name,
and always studiously avoided glancing at his name tag. He considered it a
personal favour to the concierge that he had made no active efforts to have
him fired. Still, despite his other failings the man was probably strong enough
to carry the painting up to the apartment, though the thought of him touching
it made Jésus ever so slightly uncomfortable. The concierge sighed at the
request and called to the little room behind him for someone to watch the
front desk, eliciting a snort from the art dealer over the pointless delay. He
had a dinner reservation at Le Gavroche at seven, and he intended to work up
quite an appetite finding his new prize a place to live.
Despite the irritations of transporting it, the painting was soon sitting
comfortably in Jésus’ apartment, waiting to properly see the space it was to
own. He dismissed the concierge with a palpable sense of relief and removed
the covering. It was everything he remembered and more: that familiar riot of
colours, the lines arcing through and around themselves, spiralling in patterns
his eyes simply refused to follow. And there, after a few moments of
watching, the woman again, her eyes still focused on him and her mouth still
set in that unreadable line. He sighed in appreciation and relief. He had been
right, after all: it was beautiful.
Jésus began to search for a position on his walls that did it justice. The
hallway was too immediate, it would overpower everything else on display.
The living room wasn’t right either, as all the walls big enough to hold it
were at entirely the wrong angle. It would be too distracting in the bedroom
as, even though he rarely showed it to visitors, on those occasions he did
bring men back, there was a very specific mood he was interested in setting.
That left the study, the smallest room in the apartment, though it was by no
means modest. Compared to his sleek modern living room he kept the study
almost parodically traditional, with a darkly stained oak desk and shelves of
books he’d had custom-bound to fit the tone. It was where he situated his
more traditional pieces.
One of his visitors had once asked him how he could be so calculated about
his own home, and Jésus had been slightly taken aback. He’d never really
considered the question, but on reflection he decided that perhaps he didn’t
consider anywhere truly a home. It was all simply space to be refined, to be
turned into something of value. There was nothing valuable about simply
living in a place. Any animal can do that. And perhaps if people didn’t
understand that they didn’t deserve to have it. He didn’t say any of this out
loud, of course, it wasn’t the man’s business. But the question stayed with
him. It had nothing to do with home, not really. This space was his because
he could realise its true potential, and that ownership, that curation, was a
lifelong project
‘The study,’ he said finally, staring at the painting. ‘The right home for you,
I think.’
Previously pride of place had been given to a religious piece by Karel
Škréta, but looking over it now he had to fight back the urge to tear it from
the wall and hurl it out of the window. He was no stranger to the need to
move past what had come before, in some cases even to destroy it, to burn it
all down and make way for the new, but he had never before felt it as such a
powerful urge. He took a breath and carefully removed the Škréta from its
position.
The rest of the day was spent meticulously rearranging his apartment,
moving and reorienting almost everything until he was once again happy with
the layout. In the end he got rid of a few of the pieces he’d had for a while: a
glass sculpture by a formerly up-and-coming artist named Karl Velter and a
series of Barlach lithographs he had picked up on a whim while flirting with
expressionism. He stood there, admiring his acquisition in its new home.
Knock knock.
He was roused from his contemplation, realising with some confusion that
he needed to turn on the light. When had it got dark? He felt the deep
gnawing of hunger in his stomach. Remembering what had stirred him, he
hurried to the front door and threw it open. The hall outside was empty.
Were there children in the building? Jésus curled his lip. He had no quarrel
with those who had children, of course, so long as they had the decency to
breed quietly. No sign of the little timewasters, though. Luckily, he hadn’t
quite missed his dinner reservation, though he was acutely aware that he
hadn’t freshened up after shifting his displays around and must look a mess.
Then he realised he didn’t care.
But that was nonsense, surely. He had planned it as one of his ‘exhibition
dinners’: meals he took alone, well dressed and dazzling, to remind the great
and the influential of his good taste. He was Jésus Candido, after all, and his
appearance was as much an artistic expression as the rest of him. And yet,
when he looked at the world outside his apartment, so drab and colourless
after the vibrant hues he had so recently fallen into, he could not bring
himself to be concerned about how he looked. He ate quickly, ignored the
other patrons, and returned home immediately after.
Jésus was in his apartment. It looked as though it had been drawn from
memory, sketched out and painted in those same crawling technicolour lines
that had so captivated him before. He knew he was dreaming, but that didn’t
bother him at all, and a gentle calm washed over him.
This , he heard himself thinking, this is home .
Knock knock.
Someone was at the door. Compared to the thin swirling strokes that
composed the rest of the apartment, the entrance was thick and smudged, as
though made with an old brush, overloaded with cadmium red.
Knock knock knock.
They wanted to come in.
The sound became more insistent, more aggressive. He reached for the
handle, and the door ignited, exploding into a bright and hateful fire. He felt
the heat as it charred and cracked the lines that made it and stained the
dazzling colours a charcoal black. He dreamed the smell of burning wood as
the flames spread through the apartment. It was not the comforting wood
smell of a fireplace or a bonfire, but the awful stench of everything he knew
being rendered down to ash and heat-scoured earth. It was all ablaze now, his
whole world incinerating: everything he had so coldly assessed and
positioned and believed himself apart from, devoured in a wave of genuine
loss. He felt the flames reach him, melting his flesh and shattering his bones
in their intensity. But they left his eyes, trapped and staring wildly at the
figure moving slowly through what had once been the door. The pain was
only bearable because it wasn’t his. It belonged to the dream, and all he could
do was endure and hope to wake.
Still, the figure approached, and he saw that it wore the face of the painted
woman. It was as twisted and distorted as it had been on canvas, that same
chaotic mess of curling lines and angry hues. She wore a drab olive dress and
she was burning, ravenous, desperate to consume and utterly destroy
everything she touched with the fire that was her flesh.
 Jésus awoke clawing at himself, desperate to extinguish flames that were not
there and to defend a home he did not have.
Over the next two days, Jésus found himself falling behind on much of his
work, with the hours seeming to simply disappear from his day. He found
himself standing before that painting more and more, studying every line,
following the shapes and colours, trying to find what exactly it was that drew
him to it. As much as he pretended indifference to the comments of his peers,
their casual disregard for his taste in this had needled him. What was it that
drew him? Never before had a piece perplexed him like this.
As he sat at his desk, on the other side of the large study, he found himself
gazing gently at the bright lines, hunting for the scowling face hidden within
them. He contemplated it playfully while making calls, updating his listings
and going through the piles of documentation that went along with his mostly
legitimate dealings. It was a welcome presence, even if on occasion it was
distracting enough that he had to bodily turn away from it to fully concentrate
on his work.
But now he was done for the day, and the rest of the afternoon was to be
spent on the balcony, enjoying the dusty heat of a city summer and reading a
book on the history of English bone china that Desmond had recommended.
He stood, stretched, and headed towards the living room, passing in front of
the painting. Mind relaxed and eyes wandering, he noticed a stark line of
crimson curling through it, a detail he had somehow never spotted before,
and paused to appreciate it.
Knock knock.
Sighing, he turned away and headed to the front door. There was nobody
there. Again. He leaned out and looked down the corridor.
‘If this continues,’ he shouted. ‘I shall call the police!’
He wouldn’t, probably, but children were stupid. He turned and slammed
the door shut, eyes falling on his clock. How had it got so late? His mouth
was dry, and his eyes ached as though they’d been focusing far too long.
Perhaps tomorrow he’d buy some eye drops. It wouldn’t do to be looking too
tired.
Jésus selected a bottle of water from the fridge and took his time drinking it,
his gaze drifting over to the Alfred Stevens hung on his kitchen wall. It was a
small painting of a woman in a wide-brimmed hat staring serenely over a
garden. But his mind was still on his new masterpiece. Masterpiece? No, it
was an intriguing piece that currently fascinated him. Soon enough he’d have
fathomed its depths and it would be replaced by something new. Even so,
there was an odd sense of relief in no longer looking at it. And another part of
him that was desperate to see it again.
He studied the Stevens and was struck by how dull it was. There was
nothing to it at all. No life, no lustre, no spark. He could feel the knowledge
prickling at his mind that if he just returned to his office, he could appreciate
a work with seemingly infinite depth. Instead, he kept drinking his water.
He’d have to replace the Stevens.
The client drained the last dregs of single malt from his glass.
‘Excellent. Shall we get everything signed?’
‘Of course.’ Jésus was looking forward to tying things up, if only because
he couldn’t actually remember the name of the man sitting across from him.
Another newly rich banker with no taste who had commissioned him to find
an utterly forgettable piece of abstract impressionism.
‘Perfect.’ His guest grinned, getting to his feet.
Jésus stood as well to lead him through to the study. That was its point, of
course, to provide the right ambiance for signing contracts and passing
money, smoothing nervous clients through the process. But something caused
his step to falter as he approached the door. An odd shudder ran through him,
like he was afraid of something. What , though? The painting? That was it.
Some part of him didn’t want to share it with this no one client.
‘Mr Candido?’
This man might become captivated by it like he was and contrive an attempt
to acquire it for himself.
‘It’s not for sale,’ Jésus muttered.
‘I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that,’ his guest said lightly, his face placid and
pointless.
No, this man would have no appreciation for it. But would that be worse?
Indifference? This tasteless oaf marking it as nothing special at all, when
Jésus had let such a thing have power over him.
Or, perhaps he simply wished to save this man from the dreams that still
lingered through his nights …
‘It’s such a nice afternoon,’ Jésus said steadily. ‘We will sign on the
balcony.’
He did not know exactly where these thoughts had come from, but whatever
the precise dimensions of his unease, it seemed the study would be held in a
quarantine, of a sort, a private place where time would simply disappear.
‘But where did he get it?’
‘I can’t tell you where he got it, that’s what I’m trying to explain,’ Antonio
retorted in his infuriating mock-English voice.
Jésus tried to keep his temper level. His brother-in-law liked to make fun of
how his accent had changed in the years he had lived in London, and at one
point had insisted on trying to talk to him entirely in English, a language
Antonio barely spoke, to ‘make Jésus feel at home’. They’d managed to put
an end to that particular joke, but he still insisted on flavouring his
Portuguese with that stupid British twang. At least he’d stopped telling Jésus
to give his love to the Queen.
‘There must have been something.’ Jésus was exhausted, his patience tissue
paper thin.
‘The guy didn’t exactly keep much paperwork.’ He could almost hear
Antonio shrugging over the phone. ‘And what there was the family didn’t
want to hand over.’
‘That doesn’t make sense. He ran a huge company, how could he not have
better records?’
There was a pause.
‘I mean, you live downstairs from Tobias Fell, maybe ask him?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’
There was an odd note in his voice, a slight waver that told Jésus he was
holding something back.
‘Antonio, I need to know. It’s important.’
‘Look, maybe you’ve been away too long. His records were destroyed .’
The penny dropped. A cattle farmer destroying their records like that
probably meant one thing – illegal land grabbing. Burned villages. Murders.
There was a silence before Antonio spoke again.
‘I didn’t say anything about this, OK?’
‘But that doesn’t make sense. This painting, it’s not like any indigenous art
I’ve ever seen.’
‘I don’t know, then. Not for certain, at least. I know some of the pieces at
auction were taken from the people they, uh, displaced.’ The conversation
had clearly taken a turn Antonio was not comfortable with. ‘I think maybe his
wife said some of the paintings were done by one of his workers. That could
be it.’
‘When you say “workers”, what do you mean?’ Jésus asked, though he
suspected he already knew the answer. ‘Farmhand? Administrator? CFO?
What?’
‘ … No. None of those.’
Ah. A grileiro , then. Likely one of the unofficial private mercenaries the
corporations sent in to clear the land they wanted to farm or log or strip-mine.
No oversight, no rules, just people willing to take guns into the jungle and
drive indigenous people off their land by any means necessary. Not usually
the sort to retire into a career of painting masterpieces.
‘Did …’ He chose his next words carefully. ‘Did Fell know about them?
The clearances?’
‘How should I know?’ Antonio was clearly keen to move on. ‘These rich
arseholes, who can say what they know and what they don’t. But it was done
in his name.’
Jésus found it hard to say precisely what he was feeling. Certainly many of
the greatest artworks had bloody histories, but to be so close to it … there
was an undeniable frisson, and not a pleasant one.
‘I need you to find him, the man who painted it. I need to talk with him,’
Jésus could hear the desperation in his own voice, but he ignored it.
‘That’s not going to be possible, I’m afraid,’ Antonio said quietly. ‘He’s
dead. About a year back, according to the owner’s son.’
Jésus didn’t want to ask the next question but pushed on regardless.
‘How did he die?’
‘House fire. Accidental, but the workers’ houses weren’t exactly built to
standard. He burned to death.’
The silence that followed was palpable, as Jésus’ skin prickled at the
memory of a dream.
Knock.
It was dark. Almost pitch black.
Knock knock.
Had he been asleep? No, he’d been … He was just …
Knock knock knock.
Jésus leapt up with a violent start, sending his desk chair tipping back onto
the soft carpet of the study. He fumbled in the corner for the standing lamp,
finding the switch and casting the room in warm illumination. This couldn’t
be right; it had just been morning. It was still morning, it must be. He had
finished his phone call, made a pot of tea, and just started an email. But the
sky outside was dark and the windows of the buildings below could be seen
dimly lit through the thin mist of rain. The teapot was stone cold, and the
email still sat blank. He checked his watch. Just past 10 p.m.
He stepped away from the painting. Get a hold of yourself. The piece was
beautiful, yes, captivating, of course. And it had clearly been dripping into
his dreams these past few nights, but this was nonsense. He adjusted his tie, a
more casual Balthus knot today, and walked firmly and purposefully to the
study door, past the thing that had apparently held him enraptured for almost
thirteen hours. As soon as he was out something snapped inside him and he
slammed the door shut, his breathing suddenly heavy. He was very aware of
how hungry he was, how intensely dry his throat had become.
Jésus retrieved a glass, filled it with water and drank it down so quickly his
stomach almost revolted. He refilled it, sipping more slowly, and sat down
heavily in the nearest armchair, mind racing.
What was wrong with him? He had been fascinated before by the painting,
certainly. It was only natural. He had lost hours staring into it, standing so
close he could almost touch it. But it had never caught his mind like this, not
from the other side of the room, and never for this long. It felt like it had
somehow claimed the whole room for itself, to the point where he barely
remembered the other pieces he kept there. What does it want?
He caught himself immediately. This was absurd. He had plenty of clients
who talked to him of their superstitions, of their strange beliefs and
conceptions of art and its origins. He nodded, of course, but privately he
despised such nonsense. His obsession was simply that, a trick of his own
personality. His eye for art was simply too strong, and he was having
difficulty overcoming it.
Even now, as he thought of the painting, he could not help dwelling on its
lines, its colour, how he desperately searched for that face hidden within it,
though the image was proving more elusive, not less, as he had continued to
observe it. Had it always been weeping?
The thing was dangerous, that much he knew, even if it was only his own
obsession that made it so. Perhaps it would be better to destroy it. But it was
also the single most beautiful thing Jésus had ever owned, perhaps that
anyone had ever owned. He would simply do his work in the living room or
bedroom and, when he had the time, he could go in and disappear into its
twisting forms. The study had always been an unnecessary display, anyway.
The room belonged to the picture now. It may have taken the study, but there
it would remain. Contained.
 He shook his head again at the ridiculous thought. He’d just had a strange
day, and it had left him unsettled. Not to mention he was absolutely
famished. He dragged himself to his feet and called down to the front desk
for a taxi. It was late, but his name got him a last-minute dinner reservation
quickly enough. His legs were weak and he found himself leaning on his cane
for support, at one point worried it would buckle. Still, he made it down to
the reception, trying his best to think of the meal ahead of him, and not what
was behind him.
When he returned from dinner, it was late. Jésus had taken his time over
coffee, only leaving when the maître d’ had gently informed him they were
soon to close. He was dragging his heels as he approached the entrance,
leaning heavily on his cane. He didn’t know what scared him more: that he
truly believed the painting did something to him, or that there was a part of
him that wanted to see it again, to lose himself in its lines. His lip curled in
distain at his own thought. Jésus Candido, scared of a painting! The very idea
was comical, absurd! But that didn’t make it any less true. He was afraid of
what it was doing to him, afraid of the dreams, afraid of the woman who
lurked within it. He tried his best to stand straight and walked through the
glass doors of Banyan Court.
Briefly, he toyed with the idea of talking to the concierge, seeing if he could
get the man to accompany him back to his apartment to remove the painting,
take it somewhere he could have it collected for storage. But it was the lazy
one Jésus didn’t like, and he seemed to currently be busy arguing with an
angry young man in a blue baseball cap. Jésus did his best to ignore them,
skirting around the edges of what seemed to be quite the shouting match, and
ducked into the elevator.
It was only as it started its ascent that Jésus realised he was not the only one
inside. He was quite sure he’d never seen the person standing next to him
before, though they seemed real enough. It was a man, younger than Jésus by
maybe a decade, and he wore what had clearly once been a well-tailored
business suit. His hair was unwashed, and the suit was torn at the knees and
elbows, with dark stains mottling its tasteful pinstripes. His fingernails were
filthy, as if he had been clawing through the mud, and a dank, musty smell
rolled off him, unsettling Jésus’ already delicate stomach. Was this man from
the other side of the building? This wasn’t his place, how had the concierge
let him through? But no, his suit spoke of money, despite its appalling
condition. The man caught him staring and gave a tired smile.
 ‘So how are you finding it?’ he asked.
Jésus cocked his head in confusion.
‘Living here,’ the stranger continued. ‘Is it everything you hoped it would
be?’
‘Yes,’ Jésus replied, willing the conversation to be over. ‘It is.’
The man leaned in close and it took all Jésus’ composure not to visibly
recoil at the smell. The stranger’s tone was conspiratorial.
‘Have you ever seen anything … weird? Since moving in?’
‘No,’ Jésus replied.
The door opened on the fifth floor and the man in the stained suit left, his
expression downcast. Jésus breathed out. How could such a man live in a
place like this? Clearly some sort of tragedy had befallen him, and Jésus was
not without compassion for such a situation, but to let oneself be seen like
that … His gaze drifted to the mirrored wall of the elevator. The figure before
him was clearly exhausted, using a cane not meant to bear the weight. His tie
was loose, and a drop of coffee could clearly be seen on the front of his white
shirt, a casualty of his shaking hands. Who was he, this man in the mirror?
He had avoided his friends these last few days but were they to see him now
they would mock him, he knew that for certain. Jésus Candido reduced to a
broken, haunted man, terrified of his own possessions and a few bad dreams.
No. He would not allow it. His life was the most powerful piece of art he
owned. He resolved that he would not be held hostage by his own paranoia
and whatever it was that was trying to take over his home. But even so, his
hand trembled slightly as he tried the front door. It opened without incident,
and he walked to the bedroom as confidently as he was able. The door to the
study remained closed, and when he finally fell into bed, for the first time in
several days he did not dream.
He woke up late on Monday, which wasn’t unusual, though the events of the
previous night had clearly left their mark on him as he groggily tried to pull
himself out of bed. He twice tried and failed to make himself a coffee before
finally remembering to put one of the colourful pods into the machine. Out
on the balcony, leaning heavily against the railings, he sipped the bitter liquid
as he watched the city far below go about its business. Finally, feeling a little
bit more human, Jésus placed the espresso cup down on the glass table and
walked slowly into the living room to do some work, trying his best to ignore
the gravity that seemed to tug at him from the door to his study.
He had given it a lot of thought, and his first order of business was to make
a call to the couriers he used for his deliveries. The conversation was brief
and businesslike, and when he put the phone down Jésus felt the most
grounded and relaxed he had since the painting arrived. Tomorrow they
would come and take it away, transferring it to the storage company he had
used for years. It was miles away from Banyan Court and he had never
actually visited it, instead preferring to use the couriers to ferry things to and
from the climate-controlled facility. Perhaps he would visit it once it was
there, but that was a decision for another time. For now, he was satisfied that
it would be far, far away. He had bested it. He had won. His home would be
his again.
He spent the rest of the morning making more calls, typing up emails, and
arranging some viewings for pieces he had been commissioned to acquire. By
the afternoon he was in much better spirits, and his mind turned to where he
might take lunch. He broke into a smile at the thought of walking out into the
world again: perfectly dressed and once more ready to be Jésus Candido. He
idly wondered which suit he would pick for his grand emergence as he
headed to the bathroom to freshen up. And found himself pivoting towards
the door to the study.
It felt like his heart had stopped as, against his own wishes, Jésus twisted the
doorknob and stepped inside. He turned towards the painting, trying
desperately to call out to someone, anyone, for help before the kaleidoscope
of light and pattern pressed itself into his eyes and his mind relaxed into
contented contemplation of the screaming face hidden within.
It was four o’clock Wednesday morning when the door to the study opened
and a shaking figure with bloodshot eyes crawled out over the threshold. He
no longer had the strength to stand, so slowly, achingly, he dragged himself
over the luxurious carpet, leaving a trail of flattened fibres behind him. It
would not win. Beautiful or not, Jésus Candido would not be destroyed by a
painting. He would not lose his home to this thing, and if a door would not
contain it, then he would have to find another way. Painstakingly, he made
his way to the ottoman, grabbing his phone from the plush cushions. There
was just enough battery to see he had 19 missed calls, a cautiously worried
message from Desmond about his absence at the Knock the previous night,
and another from the courier service, saying they’d received no answer when
they came to collect the painting. Jésus tried to make a call to get help, but
his fingers were shaking too hard. Then four per cent battery became zero per
cent battery and the screen went dark. His lips curled into a sneer. He would
need to deal with this himself.
He inched his way to his feet and limped towards the kitchen, grabbing one
of his canes from the rack and trying to regain his footing. His weakened legs
buckled almost immediately, sending him staggering into a Grayson Perry
vase, which tipped off the display table and fell to the ground, splintering into
pieces. He barely noticed, pulling himself up to the counter and reaching over
to the magnetised knife rack. Very expensive and rarely used, the knife he
chose was razor sharp, and he slid down to the floor with a smile. The blade
was heavy in his hands. He cut and ripped off one of his shirt sleeves, then
wrapped it around his eyes. When it was clear that even at this late hour some
light still made it through the fabric, he removed the other sleeve as well and
layered it on top. By the time he was done he could see nothing at all.
He lay there, mustering his strength, and heard the sound, as though in the
darkness it was right next to his ear.
Knock knock.
Soft as ever, but just as persistent. Something wanted to come into his home,
to take it from him. But he would not allow it. He got to his feet, the knife
held in one hand, the cane propping his other, and began to make his way
towards the study.
He had often measured the steps in his apartment. It was important to be
aware of angles and likely viewing points for the art he had on display. Front
door to study, sixteen steps. Bathroom to living room, twenty-three steps.
From the kitchen counter to the study had always been nineteen steps, but as
he picked his way gradually across the wide-open spaces of his apartment,
careful to avoid the shattered pieces of ceramic from the vase, there seemed
more.
Ten steps. The well-insulated apartment was silent, even the distant din of
the streets far below not reaching him now. All except for one thing.
Knock knock.
Nineteen steps. The only thing he could see was darkness. Twenty steps.
The only thing he could hear was his own breathing. Twenty-three steps. And
the knocking.
Finally, at twenty-six steps, he felt his shoulder brush against the doorframe
of the study. He tried to focus. The rubberised handle of the knife felt solid in
his fist, centring him and driving him forward, the silver of the cane’s grip
cold and certain in his hand. The knocking was louder now. With his eyes
covered, it was finally clear. It had never been coming from the front door.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 CHAPTER XX
The Leather Bag

The girl had known it, but there was something brutal in the way
the woman said it which affected her almost as if she had thrown
something in her face; she shrank back--shivered. The woman
seemed to be enjoying her obvious discomfiture; she smiled, as if
the joke had grown still funnier.

"You see, that's what made me say that you had better think.
Suppose you do give me away; after all, I'm not the person whom
you saw in possession of the bag, and you did see someone. That
someone was a gentleman friend, whose name, I am sure, you don't
want to have shouted from the house-tops. Now do you?"

The girl seemed to be reflecting; her cheeks had grown whiter,

trouble had come into her eyes; her bearing was in striking contrast
to that of the woman in front of her, who could not have seemed to
be more completely at her ease.

"How long have you known him?"

"Oh, some time. We've been in one or two little matters together,
out of which we have done very well."

"You mean that this is not the first time, that he has done this
sort of thing?"

"Gracious, no; he has been in the business quite a time; but I'm
not going to give him away, never fear."
 She laughed right out, while the girl winced.

"Where is he to be found?"

"I beg your pardon."

"I asked where is he to be found?"

"And you may ask; do you suppose I'd tell you? What, for you to
give him away? He'd get--well, he'd get penal servitude for this
alone; and then there's that Captain Draycott, or whatever is the
name, to whom he owed one."

Again Miss Forster shivered; she glanced about her, as if fearful

that the other's words had been overheard.

"What do you mean--about--Captain Draycott?"

"Why, of course you know it was he who did it; you don't want
me to tell you that. You know what cause he had; it was he who put
him in the cart at that little game of cards."

One could see that Violet Forster made an effort at self-control;

but the hideous picture conjured up by the other's careless words
was too much for her. She put her hands up to her face; she sank on
to a chair, so helpless before the stress of emotion which seemed to
be raging within that she sat swaying to and fro. The woman, still
smiling, stood and watched; then she said, her voice seeming to be
broken by laughter:

"Why, I never thought that you'd take on like this, if you really are
taking on, and it isn't put on for my special benefit; it can't be any
news to you, you must have known. You saw the man lying dead
there; you knew the cause he'd given--the person whose name we
won't mention--to out him. What's all the fuss about? This sort of
thing won't improve your looks, you know."
 If the woman paused expecting Miss Forster to speak, she paused
in vain; the agony which seemed to be tearing at the very sources of
her being had bereft her of the powers of speech. The spectacle she
presented, instead of moving the other to sympathy, seemed to
divert her thoughts into channels of bitterness. The smile passed
from her face; her tone became hard.

"What has Sydney Beaton to do with you that you should take on
like this about him? Let me tell you something about him, which may
be a piece of genuine news. If anyone ought to take on about him, it
is I, since I'm his wife."

There was silence; then the girl did begin to regain some vestiges
of self-control. She ceased to sway to and fro; the dry sobs which
seemed to be rending her bosom grew less insistent; she withdrew
her hands from her eyes, she looked the speaker steadily in the
face.

"That I do not believe."

The words were uttered with an air of quiet conviction which the
other resented.

"What don't you believe?"

"I do not believe that you are Sydney Beaton's wife; your
statement that you are makes me doubt all that you have said. I am
sure that you are not his wife; I believe him to be incapable of
marrying such a creature as you. He may have sunk low, but I do
not think that he could ever fall quite so low as that. The fact that
you have told me that one great lie makes it obvious that you have
probably told me others; I doubt that he is the kind of person you
make him out to be."

"Oh, you doubt it, do you? Very well. Then rouse the household;
they'll soon be getting up without your doing anything to rouse
them; hand over the bag and tell your story--give me into custody if
you like. Unless you perjure yourself, and I don't think you'll do that,
you haven't one shred of evidence against me, as you're perfectly
aware. All the evidence you have is against my husband; you could
send him to penal servitude. I daresay you could hang him if you set
your heart on it; but--I really don't see what good that will do you.
By the time the whole story is told, you'll be in almost as bad a mess
as he will be, and you know it."

"You steal to get money; I'll give you an opportunity of getting

money without stealing. I want to be placed in immediate
communication with--the person you know; for what sum of money
will you tell me where he is to be found?"

"How much will I take to sell him, that's what you mean!"

"I mean nothing of the kind--and you know it well enough. I

simply wish to have an interview with him."

"What good do you expect to get from that?"

"That's my affair."

"Oh, is it? You seem to be forgetting that he is my husband."

"I'm not. No harm will come to him, or to you, even if he occupies

the position towards you which you say he does."

"Tell me plainly just what it is you want me to do."

"Give me an opportunity of having an interview with him in the

next twenty-four hours, or at the earliest possible moment, and I will
give you any sum, in reason, you like to ask."

"You're a fool--you must excuse me speaking plainly, but you are.

Even supposing your intentions are all that you pretend they are,
can't you see for yourself what harm you'd be doing him? You don't
know much about the ways and dodges of the police, that's pretty
plain. Now--well, now, you know nothing--to speak of; and
particularly you don't know where he is, if anyone was to ask you,
and mind you, it's quite possible that someone will before very long.
But if you were to see him, and were to get out of him anything of
what I'm dead sure you would try to get, then the situation would
be changed altogether. As things are, no one can do anything to
you, even if you do hold your tongue, because you don't know
anything, whatever you may--well, we'll say suspect. But have you
ever heard of an accessory after the fact? If you got anything out of
him of what you'd try to get, that's what you'd be, an accessory
after the fact, if you didn't give him away straight off; and with the
best will in the world you wouldn't find it so easy not to do that as
you suppose. No, take my word for it, Miss Forster, this is a case, if
you don't know it, in which your ignorance is his bliss, and, for both
your sakes, it would be folly for you to be wise."

"All of which means----?"

"It means that you'll get no information out of me concerning a

certain person who happens to be my husband, if you were to give
me all the money you have. Now we'll drop the subject, if you
please; time is passing. You don't want to have all Avonham
interrupting our tête-à-tête. What's going to happen to this bag? It's
his bag. As you pretend to have some sort of feeling about him, and
I know he is an old friend of yours, why don't you go back upstairs
to bed, and keep from interfering in what, after all, is no concern of
yours? I give you my personal assurance that there isn't so much as
a ha'p'orth of anything in that bag that belongs to you. For his sake
what you don't want is a fuss; he'll never forget the debt he owes
you if you keep from making one; you may be the death of him if
you do; let me give you my arm to help you up the stairs."

"Let me invert the proposition--you go upstairs, and leave me

here."

"And take the bag with me?"

 "Empty."

"What will you do with what's inside?"

"The entire contents will be returned to the Countess of Cantyre."

"And if the Countess of Cantyre asks questions?"

"What is that that someone says about the Countess of Cantyre

asking questions?"

The inquiry came from the staircase just above them. Before
either of them could move, or speak, a small figure came running
into the hall. It was the Countess of Cantyre herself.

"Violet!" she exclaimed, "what on earth are you doing here? And--
who are you?" The last inquiry was addressed to the woman; but,
without waiting for an answer, her ladyship continued: "Do you
know, Violet, I couldn't sleep; I haven't had one single wink of sleep,
and at last I couldn't stay in bed any longer, I had to come to you. I
had a feeling that you mightn't be getting much sleep either; but I
didn't expect to find your bed empty, especially considering the state
that your foot was in when I saw you last. I prowled about to see
what had become of you, and then I heard voices down here, and
perhaps now, Violet, you will tell me what this new and most
extraordinary behaviour of yours may mean, and who is this
woman?"

"This woman," Miss Forster replied, "is the person who calls
herself Jane Simmons."

"And pray what may Jane Simmons be doing here, at this hour of
the morning, with you?"

"If you please, my lady," replied Jane Simmons, "I heard Miss
Forster in the hall, and knowing that she had hurt her foot, I came
down to see if I could be of any use to her."
 Nothing could have been more becoming to a person of her
station than her manner of saying this. Her ladyship eyed her
askance.

"Is that so? Well, Violet, has she been of any use to you?"

"None whatever."

"Then, Jane Simmons, I should think that you could go."

The woman went, swiftly, noiselessly, with downcast eyes, across

the hall, towards the service stairs. When she was out of sight, she
turned towards the direction in which they were; she did not look
pleased, and she said, quite loudly enough to have been audible to
anyone who might have been standing near:

"I've as good as half a mind to get him hanged, to spite the two
of you."

The countess, in the hall, regarded her friend; it was now much
lighter, so that it was easy to see how white and worn the girl was
looking. It is possible that the consciousness of the pallid face beside
her softened the asperity which the lady had meant to mark her
tone. She just spoke two words, in the form of a question.

"Well, Vi?"

Miss Forster's reply was still briefer; she merely echoed the
other's first word. "Well?"

Her ladyship waited; the girl continued still.

"Is that all you have to say to me?"

Miss Forster sighed, the long-drawn sigh of the sick at heart. Her
tone was in tune with the sigh.
 "Margaret, if I were to start telling you all there is to tell--and I
am so tired. I feel as if I hadn't slept for years, and as if I should
never sleep again."

Her ladyship's tone was practical.

"That's all very well, my dear; I can see you're not feeling
yourself, but don't you think you ought to tell me something?"

"I'll do better than tell you, since actions speak louder than
words."

Miss Forster raised the blue velvet cover, and she opened the
chest, this time without interruption; from within she took a brown
leather bag and held it out to the countess, who observed it with
doubtful eyes.

"What bag is that?"

"Take it and see."

The countess took it, a little gingerly, as if she feared that

unpleasant consequences might come from touching it.

"Vi, what are you playing at? Whose is this bag, and how did it
get into that chest, and why have you given it to me, and what is in
the thing?"

"I cannot tell you quite, as I've only seen the outside of the bag,
and that for a moment only, but I can guess what it contains."

"Then it's not yours?"

The girl shook her head.

"Then why have you given it to me?"

"I fancy, if you look inside, its contents will supply the answer."
 "But whose bag is it?"

"That I cannot tell you."

"But what right have you to give me permission to look into a bag
that certainly doesn't belong to you?"

"Don't be silly, Margaret; I fancy its contents will explain why you
should not stand on foolish points of etiquette; open it."

The countess did as she was bid--then broke into exclamation.

"Why, Vi, whatever is all this?"

"That's what I want to know."

"It looks as if it were a diamond necklace."

"I shouldn't be surprised if there were more than one."

"Vi, it's stuffed with them!"

"I thought so; I fancy, when you come to make inquiries, that you
will find all those precious things whose loss your guests are
bemoaning."

"Was it Jane Simmons who took them?"

"That is a subject on which I would rather you asked me no

questions; I cannot answer them."

"But, my dear child, what reason have you for screening her?"
Miss Forster merely shook her head. "But in the face of this you can't
expect to be allowed to take up an attitude of silence. What
explanation am I to give?"

"Give any explanation you choose; you'll find that the people will
be too glad to have their things restored to bother you with
questions."

"That's all you know; each one of those women will insist on
knowing how I was able to restore them, and if I can't give a
satisfactory answer they'll begin to think unpleasant things of me. I
must tell them something--what am I to tell them? Am I to tell them
that I found them in a leather bag which you handed over as if it
were a cup of tea? If I do, then for the history of the bag they'll
refer to you."

"Then they'll not get it. I'm very sorry, Margaret, but if you knew
how I feel you'd let me off, at least for a while; talk to me later on.
Mayn't I go upstairs, and try to get a little sleep? I believe that if I
could I'd be better able to talk to you than I am now."

Shutting her eyes, the girl pressed her fingers against the lids as
if they ached with weariness. The countess did show some signs of
sympathy.

"My poor dear Violet, do get between the sheets, and get all the
sleep you can; sleep the clock round, if you like. Is your foot still
bad? Shall I come up and help you into bed?"

"No, thank you, Margaret; my foot isn't all that I could wish it to
be, but I think I can manage. If you only knew how much I want to
be alone!"

There was a pathetic something in the girl's voice which touched

the other's heart; there was such a ring of sincerity in the expression
of her desire to be alone.

She suffered the girl to go, so conscious of her wish to escape the
scrutiny of even friendly eyes that she did not turn to look at her.
When the pit-pat of her slippered feet had died away, her ladyship
said to herself, with rueful visage:
 "That girl's in a mood for anything; I'm not sure that I was wise
to let her go alone; but how could I thrust myself upon her craving
for solitude? I only hope she'll do nothing worse than she's done
already. Now, who's that? Is she coming back again, or is it Jane
Simmons? Those steps belong to neither--that's Rupert; he's found
out that I'm missing, and he's coming dashing after me."

The lady's surmise proved to be correct; someone was "dashing"

after her, two or three stairs at a time--a gentleman who, rushing
out into the hall, looked about him; then, espying her, exclaimed:

"Margaret! You little wretch! If you only knew what a fright you
gave me. What the dickens made you get out of bed, out of the
room, at this time of the morning and slip down here?"

"Business."

"Business! What in thunder do you mean by business?"

The gentleman approached close to the lady's side; she was

looking up at him with the demurest smile.

"Rupert, I've had a dream."

"You've had a what? What's that you're holding?"

"That's the dream."

"The dream? What are you talking about--it's a bag."

"Precisely, it is a bag, and the bag's the dream."

She observed him with a look in her big, wide open eyes which
made them seem almost as if they were a child's.

"Are you dreaming still, or am I?"

She replied to his question with another.

 "Rupert, do you always believe every word I say?"

"Well"--he made a sound as if he might have been clearing his

throat--"that depends."

"At least you must believe every word I am going to tell you now;
you hear, Rupert, you must. You know what those people said last
night about the things they had lost?"

"Am I likely to have forgotten? Am I ever likely to forget?"

"Rupert--now this is the part which you have to believe--I dreamt

that all those things were in a leather bag which was in this chest."

"Great Cæsar's ghost!"

"The dream was so real that, when I woke, I had to come

downstairs to see if it was true--and it was."

"You don't mean it!"

"There is the chest; in it was this bag; and in the bag I do believe
are all the jewels which were lost--including my own. Isn't that--
wonderful?"

"It's more than wonderful, young woman, it's----"

She put her small hand up to his lips and stopped him,
commenting on his sentence as if it had been finished.

"I quite agree with you, Rupert, it is delightful; nothing more

fortunate could possibly have happened."
 CHAPTER XXI
An Envelope

What the various ladies who had spent the night at Avonham
thought when their presence was desired in Lady Cantyre's boudoir,
and they found spread out upon a table an amazing assemblage of
triumphs of the jeweller's art, and the countess told them that story
about the dream and the bag, was not quite clear. Because, in telling
her tale, the countess made it plain, not only that criticism was not
invited, but also that questions would be resented, and, more, not
answered.

When each lady was requested to choose her own property there
ensued an animated scene. It was a regrettable fact that discussion
actually arose as to who was the owner of certain trinkets. There
were three diamond brooches; three ladies had lost a diamond
brooch; the question arose as to which of those brooches belonged
to each of them; before it was solved some very undesirable things
had been said, and worse had been hinted. Nor was that the only
instance of the kind; there were a couple of diamond pendants over
which two ladies nearly came to blows. As one of them was
unmistakably much the better of the two, it is difficult to evade the
conclusion that one of them must have been a conscious liar, and, it
is to be feared, even more than that.

The countess, when her guests would let her, was content to look
on and smile; only when she could not help it did she essay the part
of peacemaker. Although the choosing of each one's property ought
to have been the simplest thing in the world, it would seem, when
the task of selection was done, as if no one lady was on the best of
terms with any other; a fact on which it is inconceivable that the
countess had calculated as likely to prevent any undesirable
discussion of her story of the dream.

"They can talk as much as they like about it afterwards," the

countess had said to her husband, "but they won't have a chance of
talking to me; because you and I are going for a yachting cruise
which will occupy us all the spring and summer."

"What! Aren't you going to spend the season in town?"

"I am not."

"But you've had the house done up, and--no end!"

"Rupert, my health will not permit it. You are going to wire to
your captain man to have the yacht ready to-morrow. I am going to
see Sir James Jeffreys, and he is going to order me on board at
once, because I must have sea air, and Violet Forster is coming with
us."

"Is she--is that because that ankle of hers must have sea air too?"

"Surely you must be aware that there is nothing so restful to an

injured ankle as the sort of life one leads on board a yacht. Please
send your wire, or shall I?"

This conversation took place before the lady and gentleman had
yet quitted their own apartment; he was dressed, and she had
dismissed her maid. When she said that about the wire he began to
snap his thumb-nail against his teeth, which was a trick he had
when he was worried.

"Aren't you forgetting one thing? It's all very well for you to have
a dream about that blessed bag, but I can't have a dream about that
fellow Draycott. I can't start off yachting while that's in the wind."
 The lady was standing, with her hands behind her back, looking
down with a contemplative air at the toe of her tiny shoe as it
peeped from under the hem of her dress.

"I don't see why not. Our Easter ball has not been, in all respects,
the success I had hoped it would be, and usually is; but I don't see
what is to be gained by your hanging about while somebody is
looking into that very unpleasant affair. Indeed, it seems in itself to
be a sufficient reason why you should go yachting."

The gentleman was still worriedly clicking his thumb-nail.

"It's all very well for you to talk, but things are not going to be so
easy for me as they've been for you. I tell you I can't dream about a
bag; I don't at all suppose that I shall be able to get away with
anything like decency--not what you would call get away--for, at any
rate, some days to come."

"Very well, then Violet and I will go alone; we will chaperone each
other; and you will join us when you can. I presume you don't
suggest that it is necessary that I should stay?"

His lordship pulled a rueful face.

"It certainly isn't necessary, because I don't suppose you'll be able

to do anything, but----" He gave a little groan. "Well, I expect you're
right, and after all perhaps you'd better go, and, of course, if you
like, take Vi with you; she'll be a companion. I shouldn't wonder--
I've a feeling in my bones that there will be a fuss made about Noel
Draycott; and if there is, you'd certainly better be out of it. Upon my
word, I wish we'd never had this ball; I've a kind of a sort of a
feeling that the Easter ball at Avonham is going to bulk rather largely
in the public eye; I see myself figuring in the public prints, and I
certainly don't want to have you there. I'll wire to Slocock right
away."
 Captain Slocock was the officer in command of the Earl of
Cantyre's well-known steam yacht Sea Bird.

The prophet was justified, there was a fuss; nothing had yet been
heard of Mr. Draycott. It became a moot point whether something
ought not to have been done in the matter, even in the dead of the
night; it might, more than one person in the establishment became
presently aware, become a very awkward subject for unpleasant
future comment.

His lordship's point of view was easy to grasp; there really had
been nothing to show that anything serious had happened.

Scandal was the thing most to be avoided; if the police had been
called in, there would have had to be a scandal, and nothing might
have suited Noel Draycott less. There might, his lordship put it, have
been a discussion between Noel Draycott and, say, someone else, of
a strictly personal kind, in which Draycott might have got the worst
of it. It was a most regrettable incident, that such a thing should
have occurred at Avonham, on the night of the Easter ball. Mr.
Draycott owed an apology to his hosts and their guests; he would be
called to a severe account at the very first possible moment.

Of course, Major Reith had been under a misapprehension. In the

first shock of his surprise at finding the man in such a dreadful
condition on the floor, he jumped to the not unnatural conclusion
that he was dead, which, though natural, was absurd. Who had ever
heard of a dead man picking himself up and taking himself off?
Which was what Noel Draycott had done.

Where he had taken himself to was another story. He was not at

the barracks, as they had learned on the telephone, but then it was
hardly likely that he would be there. In that discussion with someone
else, he had been pretty badly knocked about; the major's story
made that clear. He would doubtless be ashamed of himself; there
was probably something not nice at the back of it all. He would
probably have preferred to take his broken head somewhere where
there was a chance of his wounds being healed without their ever
coming to the knowledge of his brother officers. What had to be
ascertained was the hiding-place in which he had taken shelter.

And here something a trifle awkward cropped up; it seemed

possible that he had never been either at Avonham or in that part of
the country before. Then, in his state, at that hour of the night, for
what quarter could he have set out, and how?

The presumption was that he had got out of the window, and
shut it after him, which was in itself to presume a good deal; but as
it seemed impossible that he could have gone wandering about the
house--they had searched it from cellar to basement, to make sure
that he was not hidden in it somewhere--he could have gone no
other way. But after he had got out of the window, what then? In his
then state, in the darkness, in a strange place, for what goal could
he have been aiming?

The obvious answer seemed to be, none. He could not have had
any cut-and-dried scheme formulated in his brain. The probability
was that he had gone wandering, aimlessly, on. Then, in that case,
he could scarcely have gone far; not beyond the park which
extended for vast spaces about the house; he would never have
found the way, even if he had been able to go the distance.

The conclusion therefore was that Noel Draycott must be

somewhere within the precincts of the park, so search parties were
sent off in all directions to look for him. There were quite a number
of houses in the park; inquiries were made at each of these without
result. One small fact did leak out, if it could be called a fact. At one
of the keepers' cottages, a small child, a girl of eleven or twelve,
declared that she had been awakened in the night by the noise
made by a motor-car. If the child's tale was true, then it must have
been after half-past three in the morning, probably after four. Her
father had been kept up by the ball at the house; he had had
something to do with expediting the departing guests. It was half-
past three when he went home; the child was then awake, had
spoken to him. She said that after her father had left her she fell
asleep, and was disturbed by the motor-car; the cars and carriages,
she said, had been waking her up all through the night. No one
could trace that motorcar, whose it was. At that hour what could it
have been doing there? The last vehicle had borne away the latest
guests long before then. No one seemed to have observed the hour,
but it was probably about that time that Major Reith had found Noel
Draycott lying on the floor--to lose him directly afterwards. Had the
belated motor-car, which that small girl asserted she had heard,
anything to do with the loss?

It was not an easy question to answer.

The problem which the Earl of Cantyre, and in a lesser degree, his
friend, had to solve, was, what was to be done? Should they wait for
news of Noel Draycott, emanating probably from himself, or should
communication be made with the police? The latter all the parties
seemed to be most unwilling to do. It meant publicity. The news that
the police had been summoned to Avonham would be flashed all
over England inside an hour. It was just the spicy sort of tale the
public would like. "Strange Occurrence in a Nobleman's Mansion":
the earl could see that sort of headline staring at him from the
principal news-page of a dozen different journals. "The Avonham
Mystery"--that was the kind of title which some inspired journalist
would fit to a commonplace, vulgar, sordid incident.

No, thank you. His lordship decided that he would not risk that
sort of thing until compelled by circumstances. He would have
inquiries set on foot, in a quiet way, in every possible direction; if
nothing came of them it would be time to speak to the police.

One small, yet curious occurrence did, however, induce in him a

momentary qualm of doubt as to whether it was really the wisest
course which he was pursuing.
 They had been talking in the hall--the amount of talk which was
got through at Avonham that morning was beyond credibility. The
earl was just marching off to his own particular sanctum, wishing
with all his heart that the people would go, and that there might be
peace, when he saw in the hand of a bronze figure which stood on a
pedestal--an envelope. It was so placed that he could not help but
notice it; as he came along it caught him full in the eye. He had
passed that figure only a minute or two before; the envelope had
not been there then, or he would certainly have seen it. He took it
from the fingers of the outstretched hand. It was inscribed, in
Roman letters which had been formed with a soft pen, "To the Earl
of Cantyre."

He glanced around; no one was in sight who seemed likely to

have put it there. It struck him, even in that moment of irritation, as
a little odd. He tore it open. Within was a sheet of his own
notepaper. On it, again in Roman letters, formed with the same soft
pen, was written:

"Who stole the Ditchling diamonds?

"Sydney Beaton.

"Who killed Noel Draycott?

"Sydney Beaton.

"If in doubt apply for information to Violet Forster."

His lordship had but time to get a cursory glance at these singular
questions and answers, when his wife, coming along with the
Duchess of Ditchling beside her, snatched the piece of paper from
his hand; it was done with a laugh, but it was none the less a
snatch.

"My dear boy," she cried, "what have you got there which makes
you pull such faces?"

She glanced at the paper she had captured--and her countenance

was changed. Something was flashed to each other by the married
couple's two pairs of eyes. Then the countess crushed the sheet of
paper in her hand, and, without a word to her husband, went on
with the duchess.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com