The Spider- 21
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We are more than halfway through this story already! The Spider is a gothic horror mystery novel set in late Victorian Liverpool. Thank you for tuning in every week. If you love this story, don’t forget to like, comment or share to spread the word. It’s free!
“Well, what have you found then?” Gill asked, sitting down in his chair for once.
Muldoon sighed and lit a cigarette. “Too much. God, Gov, why did it have to be me?”
Gill flashed him a mischievous smile. “Weird shit, then?”
Muldoon’s long black eyelashes framed his bloodshot eyes like a lead window frame. He rubbed them, furthering the discomfort. Everywhere he looked, there was something to be suspicious of, but he couldn’t use everything as a lead at the same time. He thought of Frances Bryant’s deathly pallor and the endless blubbering of Beatrice Larkin. He felt heavy in his chair. “You could say that,” he said. “It’s a house full of women and one of them appears to be mad.”
“All women are mad, Daniel. Psychosis on legs—the lot of them. Mad, bad or sad.”
Muldoon flicked some ash into the ceramic ashtray and smirked. “How’s Mrs Gill?”
“Sad,” Gill said, blowing smoke out of his nostrils, “because I’m in here with these hapless bastards all night. The only difference between me and them is I’m getting paid for it—and they’re scum, I suppose.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs, nursing a glass of scotch in his hands. “So, is there a ghost or what?” he said, his pipe bobbing up and down with the movement of his mouth.
“There’s a ghost all right.” Muldoon took a deep drag of his cigarette and exhaled slowly, thinking. He couldn’t recall a time when he had smoked as much as he had in the last two days, and studied his cigarette case, thinking about the woman in the box.
“Haunting you by the looks of it.” Gill was more open-minded when he’d had a drink. He put his scotch back on the desk and held his pipe, sucking the life out of it. The amber glow caught his eye as he prepared his answer.
“There’s more than one ghost,” Muldoon said with a sigh.
“Yeah? Christ.” Gill shuddered. “Who better to handle it though, eh?”
“I managed to catch the doctor today. Had to flash him this badge you made me.”
“Really?”
“This is the thing, Gill, and it did make me wonder…” Muldoon leaned in over the desk to look at him closely. “Why are we still working together? Why am I still parading around with this badge? I’m not a real police officer. Why am I here?”
“Because I need you.”
“That’s all?”
“You saved my life, Muldoon,” Gill said gravely. “You saved my family.”
Muldoon tried to speak but Gill spoke louder. “That was the first time—and this is the honest to God truth—the first time I ever, ever feared for my life as a police officer.” Gill scrunched his face up for a moment and continued. “This city’s evil, Mulders. It’s not just the gangs and the thieves and the corrupt factory owners—something grows here, like a fucking fungus. Down the sewers or something—I don’t know, but you get my point. Since this place started filling up with people fifty years ago, it's rotten. It stinks.” Muldoon raised an eyebrow. “No, not ‘cos of the Irish. Piss off with your victim card. You know what I mean. There’s evil everywhere and I've never met anyone like you. You just handle it like it’s normal. I need you on my team, Mulders. It’s dark out there. Even if you are a strange bastard. There’s always something kicking off in the underworld. The real underworld, and I can’t do it alone. It scares me shitless. If people knew the truth, they wouldn’t sleep at night.”
Muldoon looked down at his lap and grinned. “I’d agree with that,” he said dryly.
Silence edged its way in and sat between them for a few moments while they smoked together. Gill, returning from a deep thought, put his pipe down and folded his arms. “So what’s next then?” he asked. Where’s the husband?”
“Definitely not at home. The housekeeper says he’s in South Africa. I don’t know much about him other than that he struck gold a few years ago and now he’s doing something similar down there, scrapping over land with Zulus or the Dutch or something.”
“You might find this of interest, then,” Gill said, opening a drawer in his desk and lifting out an envelope. “Deeds to number five, Percy Street. It says that Mr John Bryant has been the owner of that house for ten years. Let’s hope the ghost has been around longer than he has, or we’re looking for a body.”
Muldoon flicked through the images of the day in his mind. “You think there’s been a murder?” he asked, knowing full well that Mary had tried to speak to tell him about it.
“It’d be good if there ‘ad. I’ve got a toff’s missing persons list as long as the road to bloody Wigan Pier and back.” Muldoon’s mouth dangled open in disbelief. “Yeah,” Gill continued. “Kidnaps, murders, suicides. Those rich bastards are messed up in the head. Had two brothers kill each other last week in a shoot up over inheritance. Twins.”
Muldoon, grateful to not have had too many dealings with regular policing, shook his head. “There’s a ghost I’ve seen, sir, but I don’t know if it’s connected to the Bryant’s yet.” He shrugged. “It’s not your classic haunted house or family curse type of thing. They’re new money.”
Gill put his pipe down, stood up and stretched. “So? Money’s money. They have a lot of it. I wouldn’t put it past them. Rich killer, poor killer—everybody shits, Mulders.” Muldoon, interrupted by a passing thought, wondered about the mysterious Mr Ellman for a moment.
“Are any women on the missing list called Mary?”
Gill stared at him incredulously. “Are you having a laugh? Mary, Margaret, Sarah. They’re all called one of those names. You’ll have to narrow it down somewhat.”
“How will I do that?”
“You’ll have to ask one of the sergeants downstairs to find that out. How old does she look? The ghost, like?”
“Hard to tell. She’s dead. All dead people look ageless, and at the same time old and decrepit.”
Gill shrank away in disgust and picked up his pipe again.“Well, when you find out, you get your lucky Irish arse over here and we’ll bring the squad.”
“I’ll have one more sweep of the house tomorrow and then I’ll have to go wider. I’ll speak to the employer. He might be able to tell me something about Bryant.”
Muldoon stubbed his cigarette out and reached for his coat. Gill had walked over to the door to let him out but he could see that the Chief Inspector was thinking deeply about something he’d rather not have been.
“Goodnight, sir.”
“Night, Mulders.”
***
Muldoon stopped in his shadowed doorway beneath the coos of nesting pigeons and turned the key in the front door. Stepping into his dark office, he dumped his coat and keys onto the table and reached for his matches to light a lamp. It was at that moment that he heard the sound of two people clambering down the stairs that connected him to Mae Magnusson’s premises. “I told you he’d be back, love,” he heard Mae saying to someone else. Their shoes clacked heavily on the rough wood steps, echoing down the hallway.
He approached the connecting door and unlocked it just as Mae rapped her bejewelled knuckles on the wood. She jumped back at the sudden opening of the door. “Oh, there you are,” she said, smiling with her rouged lips. Her wig for the evening was an unnatural red, and he noticed she had acquired a beauty spot on her cheek overnight.
“Everything all right, Mae?” he asked. Mae turned her head to look back to the stairs, where someone was still coming down. It was Sarah Jones, looking more uncomfortable than he had ever seen her before.
“This pretty little thing came looking for you. Says she knows you.” Mae winked. “I said I bet she does.”
“Miss Jones,” Muldoon said, alarmed by her presence in the corridor. Sarah’s cheeks flushed crimson, contrasting with her bright green eyes.
“She came in through our door. But don’t worry, we were very hospitable, weren’t we darlin’?”
“Yes, very much so.” Sarah’s lips slammed together to create something halfway between nervously smiling and cringing.
“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” Mae said with a cheeky smile. “I’ve got a business to run.” The older woman giggled and almost ran back up the stairs, leaving Sarah and the inspector in the corridor. The sound of loud, jaunty piano music and laughter floated down the stairs until they heard her close the door with a slam.
“You could have told me you lived in a bawdy house,” Sarah said, almost under her breath.
“I don’t?” he said, taken aback. “Why were you up there?”
Sarah pulled two cards out of her pocket and presented them to him. “This one is the card you gave me, and this one is one I found in the house. It’s the same building, is it not?”
“I’m a tenant, yes. I’m 10a though, as you can see here.” He pointed to the address at the bottom of the card he had given her. She blinked with embarrassment.
“At a glance, they looked the same. I walked in through the street entrance and—I shall probably never live it down.”
He smiled, finding himself pleased to have company. “No one will have seen you. Anyway, did you want to come in?”
Sarah followed him into his office and waited in the dark while he flitted about the room lighting the lamps. When she could see it, she sat down on the tattered armchair in the corner. She looked about the modest room and spied an open door at the back, where a single, brass bed rested on a long-neglected brick wall, adorned only by a wooden crucifix.
Muldoon awkwardly approached a small table in the corner where a single bottle of scotch stood and asked, “would you like one?”
“I think I need one, don’t you?” she asked. They both laughed.
“The girls are all right. Mae is a good landlady. Never gives me any trouble.” He brought Sarah a glass of scotch. She thanked him and held it in her hands. “So what can I do for you, Miss Jones?”
“You said I should contact you if I had anything that would help and… I think this might.” She retrieved the card again and held it out to him. He took it gently and read the scrawl on the back.
“It’s a calling card. Where did you find it?”
“In the wardrobe. I was putting some of Elsie’s things away and it was there, on the bottom. I thought it might have been yours.” She watched him take a sip of his drink and shake his head. He looked at her for a moment, thinking.
Sarah straightened in the chair. “Well it’s not mine!”
“I know how it looks, but I assure you I haven’t seen Madame Chloe. I don’t see anyone upstairs—”
“It’s none of my business if you do.”
“Now, look—”
“No, please. I just thought it might be yours or… someone might have left it.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong but, it’s a house full of women, Miss Jones.”
“That’s why it’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes…” He didn’t see the card when he had been there that day. “I suppose you’re right.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Well, I don't know yet,” he said, deepening the creases at the corner of each eye with his smile. “What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know.” She slapped a hand down on her lap. “Now I feel silly.”
He sat down in the wooden chair opposite. “There’s no need to feel silly. You brought me something that you thought would be useful, and it might be!”
“Do you think so?”
“Perhaps it belonged to Mr Bryant?”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Mr Bryant? No, that's not possible.”
“He’s been away for a time—”
“No!” Sarah’s eyes were beautiful when indignant, and they were burning through his face. “Mr Bryant and Frances—they love each other. I mean, it’s like they’re not married at all the way they are with one another,” she cast her eyes downward, “if you catch my meaning.”
“Men don’t seek the services of whores because they don’t love their wives, Miss Jones,” Muldoon began, “it’s perfectly normal for sailors, for example—”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “Please don’t patronise me, Inspector. It’s not like that.” Her eyes twinkled with the impending swell of tears. "It’s the thing you read about in storybooks.” She scoffed and shook her head. “You may think me a naive woman, but I know things can go on behind closed doors between families. I assure you, Mr Bryant wouldn’t do that.”
Muldoon was stunned by her passionate statement. “You said to me earlier that you barely know the man, Miss Jones.”
“True,” she said as she nodded, “but I know Frances. If he was interested in other women, she would know. I can only measure his character by what he means to her, and it’s not something he would do to her.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I can’t. It’s just a feeling. But by all means, go on and think what you like. They are just my thoughts, really. Besides, he’s been out of the country for nearly three months. Why would this card appear now?”
Muldoon enjoyed her inquisitiveness, and gave an approving nod. “Perhaps someone wanted us to find it.”
“Are you going to ask this… Madame Chloe about him?” Her lips curved into a sneer as she said the words Madame Chloe. He found it quite amusing.
“I might. Do you want to come with me?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Heavens, no!”
Muldoon laughed. “I’m just teasing, Miss Jones. I can ask her another time.”
Sarah studied him for a moment. The fire of the whiskey spread through her chest, easing the tension in her body as her muscles relaxed into the chair. There was no fire lit in the room, but she felt warm. Her eyes began to relax.
“Do you know who called for the doctor, Miss Jones?”
The question stirred her from her apparent drowsiness as she processed it. “I don’t know,” she said, cocking her head. “I thought it might have been Beatrice, but I don’t know.”
“Perhaps it was.” He stuck out his chin while he was thinking of his next question. “What do you think of the doctor?”
“I don’t really know. I haven’t thought about him,” she said, resting her chin on her hand. “He’s just a doctor. Talks too much, and Frances can’t stand him, but he…” she trailed off, as though someone had interrupted her thoughts. “He hasn’t said what he’s doing or why… I suppose. I mean, I’m just the governess, but Beatrice has nobody else to talk to.”
“Do you know what the medicine is that he’s prescribing?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t been in her room for a while. I’ve only been asked to sit with her once or twice. My duty is to Elsie.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed. “What exactly, in your eyes, is wrong with your mistress?”
Sarah leaned forward. “Something happened, after the seance,” she began, “the house hasn’t been the same since, and neither has she. It’s like… that ouija board gave life to something. Things move around, and I know I haven’t touched them, nor have I seen anyone in the room. As far as I know, the maid cleans the nursery once a week but it’s myself and Elsie in there most of the time. When you live with children, you know when a child has touched something. There will be grease marks or sticky fingerprints, or of course, they knock it over and don’t pick it up. I myself have never really believed in ghosts, and I wasn’t sure if Frances did, either, but something speaks to her. I fear that she has no choice but to listen.” She sipped some more whiskey. “I don’t know if it torments her…” she looked directly into his eyes, “or if it has become her.”
He loosened the collar of his shirt. Hours before, the ghost of Mary had grabbed it, and tried to pull him into a chest. “Can you tell me what the others think?”
“Her mother seems to think that she is possessed. I think Mrs Larkin is fearful, and weeps as though Frances has died already. Of course, Beatrice was in that room with them when it happened—the seance, that is—and she has not uttered a word about it since. I think she feels rather guilty—the seance being her idea—and is having trouble dealing with it, which is understandable.”
“And the other members of the seance?”
“Oh,” Sarah bit her bottom lip in thought. Muldoon waited, crossing his legs and listening carefully. “The medium is called Mr Kingsley, and he brought with him another man—Fred. I’m sorry…” She lowered her shoulders and frowned. “I can’t for the life of me remember his surname.”
“That’s all right. I’ll arrange a meeting with them, if I have an address?”
“I’m sure you could. Beatrice has their address.”
“Thank you, Miss Jones. Back to the ghosts, then—and give me the first answer you have. Do you think that the house is haunted or not?” Muldoon, even if he knew the truth, still liked to know the opinions of occupants. Their usual inability to see or hear ghosts fascinated him.
Sarah pulled her shawl tightly over her shoulders and rubbed her arms. “It could be. That’s the only way to explain what’s happened, surely.”
“Does anything strange happen in the nursery, or your room?”
“I can’t say I’ve noticed. It’s a little cold in there, sometimes, but that’s to be expected.” She covered a yawn and sipped some more of her drink. Muldoon lifted his glass to her and asked if she wanted another. She shook her head.
“It’s quite late, inspector. I should think about going home.”
“I’ll walk you.”
“Thank you, I would like that.”
They strolled uphill through the lamp-lit streets that glistened with the damp of the autumn evening until they reached St Bride's church on the corner. The white facets of the unusual building stood out against the dim brickwork of its surroundings, like a temple on a mount. Sarah, flushed from the exertion, stopped for a moment to adjust her shoe when Muldoon stopped and looked around cautiously. They were surrounded only by the spotlights of the gas lamps and the shadowy buildings, but he sensed they were being watched. He held a finger to his mouth. They both listened. The shrubs in the churchyard beside them rustled. Sarah instinctively positioned herself behind the inspector and squinted into the darkness.
“Dooney!”
It was Paulie, leaping over the wall of the churchyard, excited to see the inspector. Sarah sighed with relief, holding her hand on her chest. “Paulie!” Muldoon called, “what are you doing in there?”
“I was followin’ ye, but I wasn’t sure if it was you.”
“Why?”
Paulie looked up at them with large, bashful eyes. “You’ve got a lady with ye.”
Sarah blushed. “How long have you been following us?” Muldoon asked.
“I was outside yours and followed you up. Mae said you were busy with a lady and tha’ I shouldn’ bother ye, so I waited on the corner. Ye didn’t see me tho’ did ye?” The boy grinned and stuck his chest out.
Muldoon laughed. “No, Paulie. You’re a fine spy.”
“I followed that doctor like ye asked.” He produced a diary and handed it to the inspector, who took it gratefully.
“Paulie, I only asked for reconnaissance.”
“Re-con-eh-wa?” The boy scrunched his filthy face up in bewilderment. Sarah laughed.
“Reconnaissance, Paulie. It’s French, I think.”
“Don’t know no French,” the boy said, kicking at some leaves with tatty boots that were only half-laced.
“Well, thank you anyway. You really didn’t have to, and I wasn’t supposed to be meeting with you ‘til next week. Why are you out so late?”
“Me da’s got a new woman. Doesn’t want me in tonight.”
Sarah blinked with an open mouth, wondering if she’d heard right. Muldoon, knowing exactly what she was thinking, gave her a regretful nod.
“Paulie, you need somewhere else to stay,” Muldoon said, reaching inside his jacket for some money. The boy shrugged.
“Nah, he’ll let me back in at er, what time is it?”
Muldoon checked his watch. “Ten o’clock.”
“He’ll let me back in at five when he gets up for work. It’s only a few hours.”
If it was possible for a heart to shatter, Sarah’s was about to crack. She didn’t know what to say, and thought of her own warm bed waiting for her with a pang of guilt. Elsie Bryant, not much younger than the urchin, slept only a few houses away, safe in the knowledge that she had a roof over her head.
“Could we at least give you some tea, Paulie?” Sarah suggested, looking back to Muldoon for what—approval? She wasn’t sure what the nature of their relationship was. “I live just there,” she said, pointing to the row of houses opposite the church. “I’m sure my mistress wouldn’t mind.”
“That’s very kind of you, Miss Jones, but I’ll take him back with me. I’m sure Mae will need someone to give her a hand digging fallen coins out of the floorboards, or cleaning the grate or something. Let us walk you home.”
The boy bumbled along behind them as they walked to number five. He waited at the front gate while Muldoon accompanied Sarah to the doorstep. Across the number on the door, a large spider was weaving a web in the lamplight between the knocker and the column beside it, just in time to catch any unsuspecting passers-by. “I feel terrible when I have to walk through a web,” Sarah said, wincing.
“Allow me.” Muldoon picked up a stick and gathered the web, relocating both web and spider to another corner of the porch. She smiled and thanked him. “Thank you for your help this evening,” Muldoon said. Sarah unlocked the door and went inside, temporarily illuminating Muldoon and the garden path before everything returned to darkness once more.
“Is that your sweetheart then?” Paulie asked as Muldoon closed the gate behind him.
Muldoon laughed and ruffled the boy’s mop of black hair as they walked back down the hill towards the river. “You’re not on duty now, Paulie. Button it.”
Interesting 🤔 Guess we'll have to wait til next week. Where is John Bryant? What is John Bryant's relationship with Sarah? So many questions!
As Reverend Spooner might say, "The thick plottens!"