Page 4 of The Magpie Lord
Day’s eyes met his for a second. “Your father died two years ago.”
“Yes. I came back here four months ago. Spent the first couple of months ploughing through the mess my father made of his affairs. No problems.” He refrained with an effort from jerking his head back as Day put a hand up next to his face, fingers moving oddly. “I went down to Piper two months ago when I could no longer put it off. You’re acquainted with my family, do you know the house?”
“Not to visit.” Day’s gaze and tone were remote, and his fingers were twitching the air around Crane’s face, picking and flicking at nothing.
“Well. I was in the library at Piper, working on the account books, and I was overcome by this appalling sense of misery and shame and self-loathing. Horror. Despair. It was dreadful. But it stopped as abruptly as it started, and, since Piper is not a happy house, I put it down to a strange mood. And then the next night, I sat down with awhisky and a book, and the next thing I was fully aware of, Merrick, my man, was shouting at me because I’d tried to hang myself from the bell rope. I have no memory of doing that, just of Merrick dragging me down.”
Day’s eyes flicked up to Crane’s again. “Then?”
“I left,” Crane said with a sardonic twist of the lips. “Ran away back to London. And—it’s absurd, but I almost forgot about it. It seemed like something that happened to someone else. I was entirely myself again. Then I had to go back down to Piper a couple of weeks ago. The first two days were fine. But the next evening...same thing. I tried to cut my wrist that time.”
“Where?”
Crane indicated the point on his wrist. Day exhaled through his nostrils. “Where in thehouse?”
“Oh. The library.”
“Was the first time in the library as well?”
“Yes.”
“Has anything happened outside that room?”
“Not in Piper. But after we got back, last week, it began to happen here. I tried to cut my wrist six days ago, and again last night.”
“Location?”
“This room.”
Day sat back on his heels. “Do you recall the times of the episodes?”
“The evening, always. Time tends to feel a little vague.”
“Mmm. Now, I need you to think carefully about this. Have you, since your return from China, ever spent an evening in the library at Piperwithoutone of these attacks?”
Crane considered that. “I don’t think so.”
“And before the first attack here, had you spent an evening in this room without an attack?”
“Yes, several.”
“And, after these episodes, did your mouth taste of ivy?”
Crane felt a cold prickle run down his spine. “Yes,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Or, at least, bitter green leaves. Strongly. And, ah...the very first time I felt it, the room smelled of the same thing. Stank of it.”
“Yes, it would. What did you bring back from Piper?”
“Bring back?”
“An object. A box. Furniture. A coat with something in its pockets. Something came from the library at Piper on or after your last visit and it is here now. What is it?”
The mansion flat was a self-contained set of rooms in one of the new buildings on the Strand. Crane had had it fitted with the basic items of furniture and he, or rather Merrick, had hung the walls with scrolls and paintings brought back from China, but he’d never planned to stay here for long. It had seemed sensible, frugal by his standards, to bring decent pieces from Piper, now all of it was his.
“We have quite a few things from Piper,” he said. “A couple of pictures, the wooden chests—”
“Since your last visit down?” Day interrupted.
“Some of it, I think. I’m not sure. I don’t pay a lot of attention to these things. But I know a man who does. You might as well come in,” Crane went on without raising his voice.
