‘Then,’ said Colm, ‘we’ll have to go back and get it.’
They argued for hours, sitting in the unknown park with London’s life teeming all around them. At midday Declan bought food from a passing street vendor.
‘You have no idea how good that tastes after Newgate fare,’ said Colm, eating hungrily.
‘Is it really bread and water they give you?’
‘It tasted like it.’ He finished the food and stood up. ‘I’m going back to Holly Lodge,’ he said. ‘I’ll find my way somehow. I’ll meet you here as soon as I can.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Declan. ‘You daren’t be seen.’
‘Nor dare you. The police will know you were the one who caused the escape.’
‘But no one at Holly Lodge will know that yet,’ said Declan. ‘So you’re the one who’ll wait here until I come back.’
‘All right,’ said Colm. ‘If you see anything of Romilly’s while you’re there, bring that as well, would you? I think she had some photos from Kilglenn.’
‘For pity’s sake, I can’t go rummaging through all the rooms—’
‘I suppose not. But there’s one very important thing—’
‘Yes?’
‘See if you can find the Title Deeds to the house,’ said Colm. ‘For I’m damned if I’m leaving without getting something out of this.’
It was vital not to feel angry or annoyed with Colm. Declan, threading his way through the streets, watchful for police, reminded himself that the request to find the deeds to Holly Lodge was reasonable – even sensible. They had hardly any money between them, and they would be fugitives for some time to come. To own a house would be a fine thing. But how could it possibly profit them? They would not dare live in it, nor would they dare sell it or rent it out. And were you allowed to profit from a crime you had committed? Declan had no knowledge of the law, but he thought it was a reasonable assumption that you were not.
Still, if he could get the Title Deeds he would do so, although he would not endanger either himself or Colm in the process.
The chess figure was another matter entirely.
Thinking furiously, Declan began to make his way across London.
In the end he simply walked openly into Holly Lodge. If anyone appeared – police or any of the girls – he would say he was collecting a couple of items of clothing he had left behind and he would be ignorant of Colm’s escape.
But no one did appear. Declan heard faint sounds of crockery from the kitchens, but he was able to go up to the room he and Colm had shared. Moving quickly, listening for footsteps on the stairs, he scooped up the few odds and ends that were there. Then, taking a deep breath, he opened the bedside drawer and took out the chess piece, dropping it into his pocket. It felt heavy, as if it was dragging down the cloth of his coat.
There did not seem to be anything in the room that might have been Romilly’s though, and Declan went back down the stairs. No one seemed to be around, although he could still hear someone moving around the scullery. Dare he go into Flossie’s part of the house? Surely the police would have taken away all her papers and documents anyway? But Colm had been insistent, and Declan, remembering the way Colm’s eyes could blaze with anger, did not feel like returning without having at least tried to find the Title Deeds. His heart thudding, he went through to the little sitting room where Flossie had died.
Everything was neat and tidy; furniture stacked to one side, a tea chest standing in the centre, containing what looked like a miscellany of Flossie’s possessions. Declan made a cursory search of this, but there was nothing except ordinary household goods, a few sketches of local scenes, some china and glass ornaments. Where would papers be kept? There was a small bureau-cum-desk in one corner; it was almost certainly locked, but it was worth trying.
It was locked, but the lock was a flimsy one and it snapped fairly easily. Feeling like a housebreaker, Declan went swiftly through the papers inside it. There were letters, bills, odd receipts from various local merchants. He opened the small drawers at the back of the desk.
The Deeds were there. Several pages of thick, expensive-looking paper, tied with narrow green tape, bearing the legend: Holly Lodge, freehold messuage and lands in the district of Highbury, County of London.
Declan thrust the papers into the inside of his jacket and almost ran from the house.
The present
‘So that’s how you did it,’ said Benedict softly, in the ruins of Colm’s cottage, with the ocean-scented air blowing all round him.
We did. And it took a long and weary time to get back up to Liverpool.
‘But you came back here?’
We did. And for a time we thought we were safe. We thought we could hide out, and I’d take the chess figure back to the watchtower.
‘To be with the embers of the others,’ said Benedict, softly.
Yes. I wish I could explain to you about its force – about how it poured itself into me and made me feel such hatred and such malevolence.
‘I understand a little,’ said Benedict, remembering parts of Fergal McMahon’s memoirs.
Do you? But you can’t begin to imagine how weary these years have been. The poets write about beckoning ghosts in moonlight shades, and they wax lyrical about wizard oaks and Homer’s thin airy shoals of visionary ghosts. Oh yes, Benedict, I have the learning and I have the classics at my beck and I can quote the great minds with the best, for the monks wouldn’t have sent their pupils out into the world deformed and unfinished before their time . . . But the moonlight shades are lonely and desolate and as for wizard oaks, I wouldn’t have them as a gift, even if I knew what they were.