Death's Sweet Echo Read online

  ‘I think it will do you good. Put it to rest once and for all. It will help.’

  ‘Help me how?’

  ‘It obviously affected you badly at the time. You never know, perhaps… it could be that the way you’ve been, the obsessive behavior, it might all be rooted in what frightened you that day.’

  Rooted? She’d read up about it, that was certain. I tried one last time.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, I really don’t. I’ve been better, I’ve got better the older I’ve got. Being with you, that helps me.’

  ‘No,’ she said resolutely, and I knew I couldn’t save her. ‘No, we’re this close. Come on. Lead me to it.’

  I drove the car into the woods, along the dirt track, as far as I could, before I parked it beneath an elm tree. The sounds of the cooling engine edged into trees and undergrowth, an intruder into the natural habitat. There were birds singing, though we never saw them. It was a sunny day, even deep in the woods, and as we hiked along an obscure path I could almost imagine that this was the pleasure trip they had all had in mind when they posted the idea at the dreadful dinner party.

  I knew where the house was, and it was an easy task to make it seem as if I lost my way a couple of times. Made it seem real, authentic, as if I was struggling to remember the directions my nine-year old self had taken.

  ‘This way,’ I said. ‘I remember the bend in that stream.’

  She looked where I was pointing and smiled. She thought she was doing some good.

  ‘We’ll be back in Chatham before you know it, and we can have a relaxing afternoon.’

  The trees opened like a theatre curtain when we came upon the house. It looked forlorn, as if it had staggered here and was gasping for breath.

  ‘Looks like it’s all but fallen down,’ Ruth said.

  ‘It does look far worse than I remember.’ It didn’t look any worse than the last time I’d seen it, but I couldn’t tell her that. She thought this was the first time I’d been back here since I was a scared nine-year old boy.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ she said, and took my hand firmly in hers. Hers was a little damp. ‘Once you’ve seen it’s just a house, and nothing to be scared about, you’ll feel better.’

  The poor excuse for a front door didn’t resist at all as we brushed it aside and went in. The smell was dreadful, and that, at least, was worse than I recalled. I wasn’t sure what to show her first, the kitchen or the living room, but, as always, I had no control over her or her rigid determination to help and save me.

  ‘You told me about the kitchen; that was where you went first, so let’s start in there.’

  The decay was more advanced and glorious than my first time. There were strings of creeper hanging from the ceiling, where they had crawled in through the cracked roof tiles. The generator was still squatting in the corner, like a bullfrog about to burst open. The refrigerator was silent.

  ‘Do you want me to do it?’ she said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Open the fridge.’

  ‘I don’t think we should.’ I did warn her.

  She laid a gentle hand on my elbow and manoeuvred me out of her way so that she was in front of the grubby doors. Just then, the green power light went on and the insistent humming began.

  ‘That’s odd,’ she said.

  She pulled at the door handle, and after several attempts the door opened and the interior light glowed as bright as before. Inside were the jars, and inside the jars were the black, writhing things. There were more jars and more things captured within them than I remembered.

  ‘God, what are they?’ Ruth said.

  ‘I didn’t know then,’ I said, which I knew was a non-answer, but she wasn’t listening anyway, so it didn’t matter.

  She slammed the door shut, and I heard glass shatter as at least one of the jars smashed.

  ‘The living room,’ she said.

  I followed her through. The dilapidation was like a living animal; I could imagine it moving, slurping moisture, devouring the food it craved. Then I heard the breathing.

  Ruth did, as well, but unlike me she turned to see what it was straight away.

  I could see, out of the corner of my eye, the indistinct black shadow-shape that was forming on the couch. All around us the house was getting refreshed.

  Ruth screamed and ran for the front door. It was shut. Her only escape from the gradually rising figure that was escaping from the renewed couch was to run up the stairs. I had never been up there, and I wasn’t going now.

  I heard Ruth’s footsteps as she reached the landing, light and dainty, lovely in so many ways. I heard, as well, the heavier tread of what else was up there with her. Behind me, the figure was fully formed. I heard the scuffed walk as it moved to the kitchen. The fridge door opened, and the muttered sounds were directed at the damaged jars, I was certain. I heard the rattle of glass as jars were taken from the shelf and readied on the kitchen table.

  The front door opened easily as I let myself out.

  I’d been back numerous times over the years, while my parents were still alive, when I lived quite nearby, and afterwards, when I moved to the city. I could have stayed away, that’s true, but I was hooked. The fascination was too great. Obsessive, I suppose it could be called.

  Sometimes the house was broken and had every appearance of being dead, but not buried, left in the sun to rot away. Other times it was as new, with smoke billowing from the chimney and fresh flowers in vases by the windows, and it was clean and cared for.

  I found the car, set it into gear and drove off. Ruth had been right about one thing – I was back in Chatham for a relaxing afternoon.

  ANOTHER BITE OF THE CHERRY

  It was colder than the grave in the sarcophagus.

  Tiaa had no concept of how long she had been there. Time had become an abstract concept. She was vaguely aware of the present, and keenly conscious of the distant past, when a terrible injustice had befallen her. She could remember being dragged from her home and taken to the temple. She could remember the pain of the ritual, and the savage chafing of the bandages on her skin as her body was mummified.

  Sometimes she thought she could still feel that awful chafing.

  She could still hear the screams of her parents and little brother as they, too, were taken by Menes’s men. Menes, that treacherous priest, whose hunger for power and for the title of Pharaoh had caused so much suffering, and brought death to so many.

  All she could do now was to lie there, immobile, as time passed slowly like the sand sweeping across the desert.

  Awareness was her curse and her saviour. Awareness of her fate fuelled her hunger for vengeance; the need for vengeance prevented her from slipping over to the afterlife.

  Instead she lay there with infinite patience, solid in her belief that one day she would be restored to life. Free from the bandages that bound her and held her captive. Free to feel the sun on her face, to fill her lungs with hot desert air. Free to seek out and destroy those who had so cruelly wronged her and her family.

  One day.

  One day soon.

  That day was coming.

  She could sense it.

  She could almost feel it, as something tangible, as if it lay beside her in the sarcophagus.

  ***

  Lizzie Stirling sat in the small office on a stiff-backed chair and watched Hoskins’ secretary pound away at a large typewriter, slamming the carriage return lever stiffly, as if the machine was offending her. Lizzie had been waiting for half an hour now, and with each passing minute her apprehension was increasing. She stole a surreptitious glance at her watch. She thought she was being subtle, but the eagle-eyed secretary noticed and fixed her with a steely stare.

  ‘There’s no point getting impatient, Miss Stirling. You came here without an appointment, and Mr Hoskins is a busy man. Very busy indeed,’ the secretary said.

  Lizzie flushed and adjusted her beret on her fres
hly permed hair. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind waiting.’

  The secretary’s stare intensified, weighing her up, appraising her potential and possible usefulness to Barney Hoskins, her boss and one of the most successful theatrical agents in London. She stared at Lizzie and saw a slim, attractive brunette, with pretty features and a trim body. Were she not, the secretary, Judy Campbell, would have sent the girl packing. Barney Hoskins would not thank his secretary for wasting his time.

  She went back to the document she was typing, leaving Lizzie to wait.

  Lizzie shifted uncomfortably on the hard chair and took a powder compact from her bag, flipping it open and checking her lipstick in the small, round mirror. Satisfied, she closed the compact and slipped it back in her bag, turning her attention instead to the theatre posters adorning the walls.

  There were titles she recognised – Blithe Spirit, The Winslow Boy – and names of actors she had worked with before the war, but as her gaze travelled around the wall, so the posters also changed to gaudy ones featuring mostly variety acts and revues.

  She blamed Adolf Hitler for derailing her promising career as an actress.

  With the exception of the Windmill Theatre, most of London’s West End had gone dark during those first days of the war – the government closing theatres, fearing what casualties could be caused during air raids with bombs falling on packed audiences. With no acting roles to put food on her table, she had volunteered for the ATS, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, figuring if it was good enough for Princess Elizabeth it was certainly good enough for her.

  On her demob she set about trying to revive her redundant career. Although the theatres had reopened, parts were hard to come by, which led her to the Archer Street office of Barney Hoskins. She would have gone back to the agent who used to represent her, had his Jermyn Street offices not been bombed during the Blitz, killing him and his entire staff. After several knock-backs from other agents, she felt this was her last chance, so despite the sniffy secretary, and the filthy looks the woman fired across the room at her, Lizzie was prepared to wait.

  The intercom on the secretary’s desk buzzed, and a tinny, disembodied voice said, ‘Send her in, Judy… and you come in, too.’

  Judy Campbell rose and came around the desk, walked to the door in the far wall and stood with her hand on the doorknob. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Mr Hoskins will see you now.’

  Lizzie got to her feet, gathered up her bag, and let the secretary open the door and usher her into Hoskins’ office.

  Barney Hoskins sat behind an imposing mahogany desk cluttered with open files, publicity photos, three Bakelite telephones, and a black box with a speaker that Lizzie assumed was the intercom on which she’d been summoned.

  Hoskins was a small man, but fat, his jowly face almost disappearing into the folds of flesh above the collar of his starched white shirt. On his nose perched a pair of spectacles with lenses as thick as pebbles. He looked over the top of them as Lizzie entered, his watery blue eyes narrowing as he appraised her.

  ‘So you’re looking for work,’ he said.

  Lizzie nodded, and coughed slightly. The small room was thick with pungent smoke from a fat cigar that smouldered in a china ashtray on the desk.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and produced a single sheet of paper from her bag. ‘My previous credits,’ she said, and handed it across the desk.

  Hoskins took it in his pudgy fingers, scanning it quickly. Then he looked up at her again.

  ‘I know your face,’ he said, and looked back down at the paper. ‘It says here you were in A Perfect Gentlemen at the Adelphi in ’37. I saw that play. Do I remember you from that?’

  Lizzie blushed slightly. ‘I don’t know. It was a very small part.’

  ‘You were the maid,’ Hoskins said decisively. ‘Murdered in act two.’

  Lizzie nodded, pleased she had made some kind of impression.

  ‘Yes, I thought so. I never forget a pretty face. What have you been doing since then?’ He nodded at the paper he was holding. ‘There’s nothing on here since July ’39.’

  ‘I joined up. The ATS.’

  ‘And was it worth it?’

  ‘I felt I should.’

  ‘A noble sentiment… and career suicide. So why have you come to see me, Miss Stirling?’

  Lizzie shifted her weight from foot to foot. She sensed rather than saw the secretary hovering behind her, and could almost feel the woman’s critical gaze boring into her back. ‘I’m looking for work,’ she said haltingly.

  Hoskins gave a throaty laugh that turned into a tobacco cough. ‘You and half the actresses in London,’ he said, when the coughing subsided. ‘What happened to your previous agent?’

  ‘He died in the Blitz.’

  ‘How unfortunate. It wasn’t Marty Cohen, was it?’

  Lizzie nodded. It was.

  Hoskins reached across the desk and took the cigar from the ashtray, took two long puffs to get it going again, sucked in the smoke and blew it out in a thin stream through his pursed lips.

  He adjusted his glasses and looked at her for a long moment. ‘I knew Marty well,’ he said. ‘I liked him. He was a good man and had a hell of an eye for talent. Judy, take a look at Miss Stirling here and tell me what you think.’

  As the secretary started to circle her, looking her up and down, Hoskins said. ‘Do you sing, Miss Stirling? Do you dance?’

  ‘I’m an actress, Mr Hoskins. A serious actress, not a variety turn.’

  ‘Beggars can’t afford to be choosers these days. What do you think, Judy?’

  ‘Good legs, trim figure – pretty face, terrible hair. But I think Mr Benson might be interested in seeing her.’

  Instinctively, Lizzie’s hand went up to her hair. The new perm had cost her a hefty chunk of her savings. She thought it looked nice. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she said. ‘My hair, I mean.’

  ‘Too dark,’ the secretary said. ‘The public want to see blondes.’

  Lizzie bit down a riposte. She could think of a dozen successful actresses with hair colour similar to her own, but she didn’t want to challenge the woman.

  She turned her attention instead to Hoskins. ‘So, do you think you’ll be able to help me?’

  ‘I might be able to,’ he said. ‘The fact you were on Marty Cohen’s roster speaks volumes and, as I said, I liked Marty. Let me see your frontage?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Your frontage… your décolletage.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘Show him your breasts,’ the secretary said.

  Blood rushed to Lizzie’s cheeks as outrage coursed through her. ‘Mr Hoskins, I am an actress, a serious actress, not some piece of meat on a butcher’s slab.’ She turned on her heel and walked to the door.

  Hoskins’ next words stopped her in her tracks. ‘I’m offering to put you up for a job, Miss Stirling; I’m not suggesting anything untoward. Which is why I asked Miss Campbell to accompany you in here. But before I send you down to see Oliver Benson, I want to see that I’m not wasting my time or his. To ascertain this, I need to see your breasts… if not me, then show them to Miss Campbell. I won’t look. I promise.’

  Hesitantly, Lizzie turned away from the door.

  Hoskins smiled. ‘Better. I appreciate you are a serious actress, Miss Stirling, but you don’t need me to point out, you’re an unemployed serious actress. I’m offering you a chance of work, real work, in very difficult times. Now come back and sit down.’

  Lizzie sat down opposite him. ‘What kind of part is it?’ she said.

  ‘Britain’s changed, Miss Stirling, since the war. The people… the men who fill the seats of the theatres these days want more than high drama and drawing room whodunits. Appetites are different now. A lot of the men who buy the theatre tickets these days are those who have returned from a very different theatre indeed – the theatre of war, Miss Stirling. They have
been out of the country for months, perhaps years, away from their families, away from their wives and sweethearts. You would be providing a service to your country, perhaps one more important than you did in your time with the ATS.’

  ‘But what is the part?’ Lizzie said, her voice climbing half an octave.

  Hoskins leaned back in his seat and puffed on his cigar. ‘Are you aware of the term tableau vivant?’

  Lizzie felt a shudder worm down her back. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I will not be a part of a living picture. It’s sordid and vulgar.’

  ‘It’s art,’ the secretary said.

  Lizzie turned and glared at her. ‘It’s not art,’ she said. ‘Women parading their naked bodies on stage for the edification of lustful men. No, I won’t do it.’ She gathered up her bag and got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hoskins. Obviously I’ve been wasting your time.’

  ‘I’m offering you a chance, Miss Stirling. Another bite of the cherry. You want to get back on the stage. I’m offering you an opportunity to do just that.’

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘You’re asking me to prostitute myself,’ she said.

  ‘At least go along to the Apollo and see Oliver Benson. Have a chat with him. He may offer you something else.’

  It was a branch offered to a drowning woman, and Lizzie grabbed it. These were desperate times. She hadn’t eaten since Monday. Today was Wednesday, and her stomach was starting to tie itself into knots.

  ‘Just talk to him. That’s all I’m asking you to do.’

  A hundred questions were tumbling over and over in her head and she couldn’t focus on any of them. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and see him… just to talk, you understand.’

  Hoskins shrugged his fleshy shoulders and smiled at her. ‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘Just talk.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Hoskins clapped his fat hands together, spilling a cylinder of cigar ash onto the detritus on the desk. ‘I’ll call Oliver and tell him to expect you.’