The Devil Walks Read online

  ‘My mother never brought herself to speak of it,’ I said quite truthfully.

  ‘Nobody did,’ she told me fiercely. ‘Nobody understood how such a thing could happen! Grief stopped our tongues. Sometimes I’d look up at the portrait of him on the stair and think the artist must have imagined him, and he had never been on earth. Nobody even spoke of him – no, not till a few months later when that cursed shot rang out deep in the woods.’

  I thought back to the toll of deaths Thomas had listed in the Devil Walks. ‘Samuel?’

  ‘Yes, Samuel.’ Brushing the flour from her fingertips, she pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders as if her body had run cold. ‘And your mother knew. She sat where you sit now, playing at puddings with the scraps of pastry I had trimmed from pies. We heard the shot, and it was far and faint. Still, I will swear that Liliana went white, and bundled up her pinafore to crush it to her face. And through its folds I heard her crying softly to herself, “Oh, not again! No, please! No, not another!”’

  Gathering her pastry, Martha began to knead as if she thought that she might knuckle all the pain out of her story. ‘I thought her fanciful, of course – to make a fuss like that about some bird that had been shot in flight. But she was right and I was wrong. For there had been’ – she spat the words – ‘some sort of accident in the woods. And this time it was Samuel who lay oblivious to the loving tears that fell on his poor face.’

  I asked her outright: ‘Who was it fired the shot?’

  Her tone was bitter. ‘Nobody who’d confess to having done so. Though, of course, everyone knew who had been in the house – and who had not.’

  She didn’t need to say his name for me to know the one whom she suspected. And I was mystified. After all, here I was, new to this house. For all she knew, my tongue could run as loose as hers. And since her suspicion of her employer was plain as paint, I couldn’t understand what she was doing cooking pies for him – unless she had some special plan to blight the man with hideous stomach pains until the very day he died.

  Still, I’d not throw away the chance to learn more of the family’s story, and so I asked, ‘And was Jack in the house?’

  She gave me a level look. ‘No. He was gone – down fishing in the river. Or so he said. And nothing could be certain, since there’d been gardeners about as well.’ She threw the last of the pastry on the board. ‘That’s when most of the other servants left – some for fear there would be another accident, and others because they thought a villain who had proved himself so cunning might next time throw the blame on someone else.’ She scowled. ‘Who’d want to hang to do a devil a favour?’

  But I was still astonished. ‘Did no one in the family suspect him? I understand why no one might dare to say a word to Jack’s father. But why did no one try to warn the children’s mother?’

  By now Martha had rolled the crust so thin that, when she peeled it from the board, I saw her shadow through it. ‘I tried. Lord knows, I tried. So did the housekeeper and the maid. But the poor soul was sick already. Indeed, she was so weak she barely understood that her dear Samuel was gone. It was a terrible time. She had such cramps. She could hold nothing down. The doctors shook their heads, and even sent some bumbling limb of the law to rattle around my pots and pans in search of poison.’

  ‘Poison?’ I was aghast. ‘So was it Jack again?’

  ‘Who knows? Lord, we were careful! But it is hard to keep a growing boy who claims his belly’s empty from prowling around the kitchen of his own home.’ She scowled. ‘The nurse the captain’s father hired was nothing but a fool, and Jack could charm ducks off water. It was no effort for him to wheedle his way into the sick room over and over “to say a few sweet words to his dear stepmother”.’ Now Martha shivered. ‘By the end, Liliana’s mother’s pains were so bad that some of us were glad to see the poor tormented soul at rest.’

  I sat without a word, imagining how grim things must have been. And finally, I asked, ‘What of Jack’s father?’

  ‘George Severn?’ Martha shook her head. ‘Robbed of both wives by death, he was a broken man. He lived just long enough to see Jack off on his first voyage, then drank his way into oblivion.’

  ‘So you could say that Jack did for him as well.’

  ‘Indeed you could.’ She nodded over my head towards the passage. ‘That’s why there are no longer any portraits in this house. My proud employer keeps one in his room – the one he ordered painted of himself in his fine uniform when he was first made captain. But as for the portraits of all those who are gone, they were torn down during one long crazed night.’

  Her lips set tight as purse strings and she added bitterly, ‘After all, even a painted eye can look reproachful.’

  We sat in silence. It was the strangest feeling. I’d come into this kitchen, a crafty boy fuelled with a plan to use whatever trickery I could to learn about the past. And out it had all spilled as if this woman had been waiting years to tell her tale.

  Yet nothing made sense. If one small half of what she said was true, then why were she and Thomas still living here, chopping the wood and rolling out the pastry for someone they believed to be a murdering monster? And, if he was so dangerous a man, why hadn’t one or both of them warned me to run for safety the moment I arrived?

  Gently I nudged her back towards her tale. ‘But you stayed in the house?’

  ‘What else was to be done, except to try to keep the last two children safe, and trust to fortune?’

  ‘Still, always to live in terror that what had happened before would happen again!’

  ‘And did …’

  But, looking up, I caught the same strained look I had so often seen on my own mother’s face, and something in me shrivelled at the thought of pressing Martha on the fate of the last brother. All I could do was shudder. ‘So many deaths! Small wonder, when I asked the way, the village women stared at me as if I’d told them I was setting out for hell.’

  ‘They think the devil walks round here. That’s why the captain’s had no other servants to this day.’

  Then out my accusation fell. ‘But you and Thomas have stayed here all these years!’

  She looked at me as if I were a fool. Her voice was tight. ‘Of course we stayed. Who else would be here, ready to watch over Liliana, should she come back again?’

  ‘But when you learned about my mother’s death from Doctor Marlow’s letter?’

  Again she stared at me as if she found it hard to believe a boy my age could be so slow in wits. ‘Why, then we knew for certain we had to stay – because we knew you would be coming in her place.’

  Then out the terror spilled. ‘But, Martha! I’m next in his sights! He’ll want to kill me too! Indeed, he already does. I’ve seen the way he looks at me. I’ve heard the jokes he’s made! Why, only yesterday he told me that he couldn’t wait to see me in the Devil Walks!’

  She laid her fingers on mine. ‘No, no. You’re safe enough.’

  I snatched my hand away. ‘Safe? How can you call me safe when there’s a string of graves behind me, with no good reason mine won’t be the next?’

  ‘There is a reason. It’s why he sent for you, and why you needn’t fear he’ll try to harm you yet.’

  Yet? I was still panicking. ‘But what? What reason?’

  She came around the table to lay a hand on my arm. ‘Listen,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘You hold the key to finding something that the captain wants. We don’t know what it is. But it is clearly something from long ago: something he lost and thinks your mother took away with her. Late at night, passing his room, we hear him mutter in his dreams; and sometimes, when he fails to hear our footfalls coming close, we hear him raging. But till he’s sure there’s nothing more that he can learn from you that might bring what he prizes back to him, you can be sure that he won’t harm you.’

  It was cold comfort. To be sure, I’d kept my secret well, showing the blankest of faces when my uncle persecuted me about the doll’s house. And lucky that I had! For that
same stubbornness the night before had probably saved my life. Once he knew where it was, it would take nothing for the man to order me to send for it. And after that there was no reason why I shouldn’t suffer as convenient an accident as all the others in the family. Why, he could take me for another fishing lesson. I could slip off a rock and crack my head, or tumble into the river.

  I could just vanish.

  And no doubt would. For even in this nest he so despised, the captain was a cuckoo. Hal, Rubiana, Topper and I had run through more than enough high-flown tales of hidden wills and lost inheritances to know that I was one last egg that he might need to smash to keep whatever prize it was that clearly lay somewhere inside the doll’s house.

  But where, exactly? Was it some buried treasure map from days at sea, spread out of sight under the patterned paper? Perhaps it was a handful of smuggled diamonds, each one painstakingly embedded in its small globule of paint and masquerading as a rose over the portico – or, still more likely, packed inside the Severin doll that had itself been carefully entombed under the window seat?

  I couldn’t guess – except to know that hidden in the doll’s house somewhere was a prize set fair to drive a grasping and tempestuous man as far as one more murder.

  Mine.

  And so I sat, brooding unhappily as I worked on with my knife. Martha turned back to her pie. The minutes passed, till suddenly both of us heard footsteps ringing down the kitchen passage.

  The door flew open and it was my step-uncle. To add to my confusion, the man was cheeriness itself, in far too lively spirits to notice any pallor about my face, or my hands trembling.

  ‘Martha! A fine day’s sport indeed! Here, take them!’

  He threw the fish he’d caught down on the table and picked up a handful of my peelings. ‘Neat coils. You’re handy with a knife, I see! Then you must gut these mullet!’

  Hastily I slid off my chair. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  He grinned. ‘Martha must teach you. But perhaps not now, because I have a host of other things to show you.’

  And off we went, into the drawing room, where he tugged open a door. ‘See! Last night I had a sudden memory of happier times, when my dear stepbrothers were alive and we played games for hours.’ One by one he was tugging things out of the cluttered cupboard: an old roulette wheel and an archery set, a wooden bagatelle game with steel balls rattling inside a small net bag. A cricket bat and stumps. A set of croquet mallets.

  ‘See! Here you have whole summers of amusement waiting to greet you!’ He put his arm round my shoulders and squeezed. ‘I saw your tight little face down at the river and I told myself, “Jack, you have been too harsh! Here is a boy who has been raised by his mother. He’s not yet strong enough to withstand hours of river sports. You must be gentle with him! Give the lad time to build his forces slowly!”’

  I lifted the quiver and the bow. ‘They’re to be mine?’

  He waved his hand over the piles he’d tumbled out onto the floor. ‘All of it! All yours, to treat as you choose. The only thing I want is for you to be happy.’

  And off he strode, leaving me standing in the middle of all these splendid amusements.

  Unhooking the net bag slung from the bagatelle board, I spilled out all the silver balls. They rolled across the floor in as disordered a fashion as my own thoughts. So, yes! My uncle was mercurial by nature. One minute up, next down. On one occasion fierce, thoughtful the next.

  Did that make him a real, live murderer? Maybe the deaths were truly accidents, and from the very start Martha had wronged the boy she couldn’t help but see as an intruder with her suspicions that he’d played a part. Clearly her judgement was not always sound. After all, if she believed the things she said, then she must realize that at any time I might, by accident, let slip the knowledge that my uncle sought and put my life in danger. She would have known the safest thing to do was turn me round and send me straight out of High Gates, back to the people who had cared for me.

  A clearer mind would have had Thomas harnessing the cart to take all three of us away the moment I arrived.

  No, she was old. Old, with a mind still horribly befuddled by one sad loss coming so soon after another. Such a grim run of deaths would take its toll on anyone, and turn the sanest person mad with grief.

  Even, perhaps, my mother. For hadn’t Martha called her fanciful? Who was to say that, bolstered by her nurse’s frenzied suspicions, Liliana hadn’t lost her judgement too, when she ran off for fear of young Jack Severn?

  And so I sat upon the floor and sorted out the bats and stumps and balls I knew about only from books, and vowed to ask some questions of my own next time my step-uncle and I sat down for supper.

  And he was in fine mood when we began, making me laugh by imitating his shipmates, and teasing me about the arrows he expected to find stuck in his fundament once I had chosen archery as my sport.

  I waited till the apple pies were set in front of us and Martha had shuffled back to the kitchen. And then I said, as idly as I could, ‘You’d think that everyone around would want to work in such a house as this. And yet you seem to manage with one bent old lady and a single gardener.’

  ‘And keep those only out of charity!’

  I stared.

  ‘You are surprised? Think, Daniel! Why should I want a doddering woman who can barely lift a bucket, and one stubborn gardener who lets the place turn happily into a jungle while he cares only for the Devil Walks? I don’t! I’d trade the two of them tomorrow for two strong people from the village who’d do my bidding more than their own.’ He spread his hands. ‘But Thomas and Martha have both lived at High Gates since they were no age at all. This is their home. It would be cruel to uproot them.’ He chuckled. ‘And so I bite my tongue and learn to live without complaint amongst the dust and spiders, leaving the two of them happy in their cloud-cuckoo-land.’

  ‘Cloud-cuckoo-land?’

  He dropped his voice. ‘Have you not noticed that Martha has a host of strange notions? Listen for half an hour and you would think this house was set about by goblins. And as for Thomas …’ The captain sighed. ‘Why, sometimes I believe he has as many weird beliefs as she does.’ He gave me a broad smile. ‘But your dear mother was so fond of both of them.’ He chased a lump of apple round his plate. ‘And Martha makes the finest pies!’

  We laughed together. And I confess that when the body is determined to show itself at ease, it’s hard for a suspicious mind to stay on guard; so though from time to time unease crept back, still I admit that I enjoyed my uncle’s company. Twice he leaped up from the table – once to fetch me oil for the cricket bat (‘No, no! If I don’t find it now, I never will!’) and once to pull out a map and show me the straits through which, on one of his many voyages, he and his shipmates chased pirates. ‘Ah, that was back when I was young and free. Now I’ve responsibilities that spill out of my ears. Why, even tomorrow I must be off to London to see to some tiresome affair that hangs forever around my neck.’

  He leaned across the table to pat my hand. ‘It may be a few days. You won’t be lonely?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m used to quiet, and my own company.’

  ‘There’s a good lad!’ With one last smile, he threw down his napkin and pushed away his plate. ‘I leave at first light. I’ll miss our friendly suppers. But I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  He rose. ‘Wish me good fortune in my quest, and in return I’ll wish you a goodnight.’

  Obediently I wished him both, then climbed the great curved staircase, and up to my room. The fishing must have tired me out because I fell asleep at once. But when, later in the night, the moon had scudded across to wake me with its light, I felt uneasy suddenly, and rising from my bed, I crept down the narrow attic staircase to see if, yet again, the bolt was shot across to keep me in.

  The door swung open. If my step-uncle planned to rise at dawn, there was no need for him to miss the chance to lock me in overnight.

  So was it Martha w
ho had pushed the bolt across? Or even Thomas?

  Whoever it might be, I was no prisoner now. Or had I somehow been mistaken the evening before? Whatever the explanation, the feeling of disquiet that had drawn me down the stairs now drained away.

  Yawning, I scurried back to bed, quite ready now to sleep as soundly as a hibernating squirrel the rest of the night through.

  What was it made the next few days such a delight? I’d found the captain’s turbulent changes of mood so terrifying that, once he was gone, it felt as if the very air was settling quietly around me. But, if I’m honest, part of the pleasure sprang from being free to test my new-grown strength. Each day I’d prowl around the grounds in search of Thomas. We’d exchange a few friendly words about some frog that hopped across the path in front of us, or last night’s rain, and then I’d take myself off anywhere that I’d be out of his and Martha’s sight.

  And there, with no one leaning on a hoe to watch me fail, I threw balls, tucked my arrows in my bow to let them fly, and swung the croquet mallet. Each time it rained I summoned an imaginary companion, and sat with him on the veranda, where I played both our turns in games of bagatelle until I’d finally mastered the skill of letting the spring uncoil with just enough force to spin the silver balls into the circles with the highest score.

  My days seemed filled with pleasures – all pleasures new to me, and each one adding to the earlier delights that still felt fresh: the feel of wind against my skin, strong sunlight in my eyes, the drone of insects buzzing around me.

  But maggots are born to chew and chew and chew. How could I help but start to wonder, in those halcyon days, just how my mother could have remembered – as she surely must – all her own days in this garden, running and jumping and feeling her own growing strength, and yet denied these joys to me, her only son. I couldn’t stop the bitter feelings rising. She had been selfish! Selfish!