Hokey Pokey, page 23
Crouch smirked. “Are you sure you didn’t feed in between? Did Valery have access to your food?”
“Of course she did – but – she couldn’t leave our land. Who would she have fed me on?”
“Herself. It wouldn’t take very much, a few drops of blood in every meal would suffice to prime you.”
Nora thought of the marks on Valery’s hands, and the way she’d jab Jaroslav with a needle.
Crouch’s smirk persisted. “You won’t find feeding difficult next time.”
“Why not?”
“I hid Reid’s remains in the well, so that she’d get into the water supply. You were consuming her for days. As I say… a few drops at a time. Just to bring you back to yourself.”
His manipulation revolted her. She wasn’t sure whether to trust it. “Reid was found in Needless Alley.”
“Yes, that development was out of my hands. The man who found the body wanted to distance himself from the crime. Fortunately I’m adaptable. I moved Westall’s body there to make the suicide note more convincing. But I guarantee you this, the well was where I left Reid.”
“It was a disgusting thing to do to me,” Nora said. “And you’ll be punished for it one day. If you’re always as reckless, you’ll get caught.”
He shrugged. “No, I won’t. I’ve too many means of evasion. I can’t easily stray far – I’ve been rooted here for a while now – but I’ve made my victims look like suicides for years. Even if the police worked out I was responsible, I can always become someone else. That’s the beauty of hotels. They’re full of people. People to mimic. People to frame.”
“Why Westall?”
“Oh, I had nothing personal against him. After I’d been in your room, and you made a fuss about intruders, Harvey suggested we frame him for it because he had a dog. Then when I needed a scapegoat for killing Reid he came naturally to mind − her room was close to yours; she could have seen his shenanigans, and blackmailed him as she tried to blackmail me. That gave him a motive for murdering her. The self-same dog could have left the bite marks in her body. So, I killed her; I killed him; and I framed him with that note.” He grinned. “I did try to bolster the story by pressuring you into saying the dog was Glennard. It was annoying you wouldn’t comply.”
“I’ve never wanted to be compliant,” Nora said. She had always wanted to be true, instead; though she had failed at that.
“Which is admirable,” Crouch said with more gravity. “Albeit inconvenient for me. I did forgive you for it – yes, I see that look on your face, I see you think there was nothing to forgive, but I forgave you anyway – and I tried again to visit you. You might have forgotten my father’s dog but you couldn’t mistake the form of a hyring. I even told you my name, in the suite. And the next day – you knew me. At last.”
“Yes. Though a few other things had to dawn on me in between.”
“Now we are united. Brother, and sister.”
“You said that before,” Nora pointed out. “But I don’t know what it means.”
“Put some more coal on.” Crouch nodded towards the tongs at her side. “This requires a longer conversation.”
5
When Nora had built up the fire, and Crouch had obtained some tea from the housekeeper – which he added whisky to – he described the months following his father’s execution.
“My mother and I moved to London shortly after your departure. Although her family never wanted to see us again, they did provide for us financially. Crouch was her mother’s maiden name, and I chose Arthur for myself.”
“So long ago?” Nora asked.
“You assumed it was recent?”
She shrugged. “I thought Arthur Crouch may have been a guest here. And that you’d… succeeded him.”
“No. I’m of my own invention,” he said. “Even if I didn’t immediately credit it, the idea of hyrings intrigued me. When the scandal hit, to be such a creature – to feed on the contemptible; then transform – would have been an enviable asset. I had to settle for pseudonymity. In London, I completed a grammar school education. I enlisted, and at the end of the war began my architecture apprenticeship. I thought, often, of the woods, but not from any maudlin sentiment for my childhood. It was your family I dwelt on; your mother, and the audacity of her crime. When I was twenty-three I made my first return to Alspath, and I kept returning. I’d walk through the woods, to watch your mother. Her favourite spot was a seat in the bay window. She would sit there for hours. At first I’d go by night, because she would be illuminated while I was concealed by the darkness. Eventually I saw her change shape; she heard a fox cry in the woods, and her face morphed to a fox’s and back. The change was so swift I might have dreamt it, but I knew then she truly was the monster you claimed. Even in her womanly form she had the same inhuman quality as a perfectly crafted mannequin. It was her choice to appear thus; the illusion of warmth and caring was in her ability, and she rejected it in defiance of the world. I began travelling to Alspath at haphazard times to see how she spent her days, but she barely stirred. There she would be, just staring straight out. Her hands were scarlet.”
“Did she sew?” Nora asked, wondering if the marks were new wounds or old scars.
“Not while I was watching. She sometimes had sewing in her lap, but she didn’t work upon it. Eventually I decided I would speak to her. I chose the anniversary of my father’s death, the tenth anniversary in fact. That morning, when I’d already seen Dr Čapek leave, I stood directly before the window. There were warps in the glass and her hair and yellow dress looked spotted. I’d already aged too much for her to recognise me. When I told her my name through the glass, I added: my father hanged for murder. Then she laughed on the other side of the window. The door to the house was unlocked, so I let myself in and joined her.”
“Was she beautiful?” Nora asked.
“No. Why?”
“I thought she had been,” Nora said. “I suppose everyone says their mother was beautiful, when she was young.”
“She looked powerful.”
“Even though she was leashed?” Nora thought of the missing tooth. She thought of never leaving the house.
Crouch’s expression was bewildered at the question.
“She had something I wanted,” he said, which may have been all powerful meant to him, when people rarely had the means to deny him.
*
That day, Crouch, not Valery, had spoken most.
“My father was weak,” Crouch told her. “He had to be, if he couldn’t evade hanging for another person’s crime. There is no question of me seeking to clear his name.”
Valery didn’t reply. She may have thought Crouch was entrapping her, or she may not have cared, but she made no admission of guilt. That was praiseworthy, in his view: to say nothing. To refrain even from asking why he had come. He waited for her to ask but she didn’t.
“I want to know how hyrings are made,” he said.
“Why?” Valery was insolent.
“So I might become one. Is it impossible?”
She shook her head very slowly. He was uncertain whether she was answering his question, or disparaging it.
“Is there anything I can offer you in exchange?”
“Bring me back my missing tooth,” Valery said. “I lost it biting my engagement ring. Jaroslav stole it and has owned me ever since.”
Crouch took her left hand. “This ring?”
“Yes.”
He slid it from her finger, and stared at the substantial diamond. The setting had grown delicate with age. He placed it on the floor and ground it beneath his heel, before scooping up the loosened diamond.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
He thought she might disobey. She glared; her irises were as pale as sea glass. The scrutiny made him think he’d erred. Then she let her jaw fall, to offer her mouth. He held her by the chin, saw the gap near the back, and pressed the diamond between two molars, hard enough to draw blood from the gum below. It glinted in her mouth as he let go.
Valery probed the diamond with her tongue before laughing long and loudly. Her lips were smeared with blood, and so was Crouch’s fingertip.
“I could obtain your real tooth more easily,” Crouch pointed out, “if you transformed me. Is such a thing possible?”
“Yes,” Valery avowed. “Hyrings are made, not born. Our young feed of us in the womb and at the breast. But anyone can feed of me, if I let them. Would you be willing to make Jaroslav your first victim?”
“I’d do so gratefully.”
“How can I trust you to keep your word?”
“You can’t. But isn’t it likely that, in coming to you, I have the disposition to eat?”
Valery looked away, through the window. Crouch waited, wondering if he should call her back to herself. Finally, she said: “You may feed of me. You may feel sick at first; the pleasure will come the next time. Take flesh where there is flesh to spare.”
Crouch contemplated her. She was a slender woman. He knelt before her, and raised the verdigris skirt to see the white thigh. He took one bite – the blood ran down his chin, sticky as the juice from a peach, and he wiped it upon the cotton. Valery sobbed.
“That is enough.” She pushed him away. “You will be like us now; you will have our powers of mimicry, and pass through mirrors, and take the form of a beast, but you will live no longer than any man.”
The blood audibly dripped to the floor. The warned nausea was tolerable, for what he’d gained. Fatigue crept over him.
“You may sleep upstairs,” she told him, as he tried to keep his eyes open. “When you wake, Jaroslav will be home. I’ll expect you to fulfil your bargain.”
*
Crouch slept on Nora’s old bed, deeply, and woke after nightfall with an alertness that was wholly new to him. He could hear Jaroslav’s voice downstairs, commenting on the acidity of his wine. The clink of silver on ceramic suggested they were at dinner.
Silently Crouch arose, and keeping close to the wall, walked downstairs again. Through the dining room door he could see Jaroslav, with his back to the hallway, seated and head down over his meal. The firelight in the room flickered.
Crouch walked past him, to pick up a poker from the hearth. Jaroslav’s fork clattered to his plate at the sight of an intruder.
“Who the devil—”
Crouch swung the poker at his head, felling the old man, who took his chair with him. Valery stood, her face unchanging, the jewelled cross at her neck reflecting the dance of the flames. She watched Jaroslav paw at the flagstones. He could not right himself. Crouch sat nearby on the floor. He lowered his face to the expanding pool of blood and licked it from the cool floor. Valery had been right; the second meal was delicious.
Jaroslav mumbled in Czech. Insults, or a curse, from his tone, and aimed at Valery, who could enjoy his downfall but still – without her tooth – not partake in it. Her husband raised one shaking arm. He yanked at her skirts. The injury to her leg meant this was enough to unbalance her. Emboldened by his success, Jaroslav pressed his advantage – he half slithered, half dragged himself towards the fire, pulling his wife with him by the hair, and Valery could not fight back against him. She was reliant on Crouch, who still lapped at the blood on the floor, too drunk upon it to stop.
“Where is my tooth?” Valery shrieked at her husband. “Thief! Bastard!”
Jaroslav ignored her insults, his crown pouring blood, his breath laboured, as he yanked her by the neck into the hearth, and held her head to the fire. She screamed again as her scalp burned. Still Crouch couldn’t tear himself from his feast. Valery shifted shape, to a rat, and Jaroslav finally released her. She ran aflame across the room to the open window, attempted to scale the curtains, and the cloth caught alight.
At last Jaroslav was still. Crouch looked up sharply, sensing the loss of life, and leapt upon the man’s neck, biting through the skin and muscle. He ate until the smoke drove him from the room.
*
“You made no attempt to save her,” Nora said.
“That wasn’t the bargain,” Crouch said. “I’d upheld my promise. Jaroslav was my first victim. With or without my help, she didn’t go quietly. She spat in death’s eye.”
“Yes, she used to spit at my father, although she couldn’t bite him. He never admitted what he’d done with the tooth.”
“That theft wasn’t enough to break her,” he said. “Which was the measure of the woman. You were lucky to be her child. I wish I’d been born to her. My parents were despicable.”
“But you pretend to be Edward, don’t you?” Nora pointed out, thinking of Enid’s sightings, her own sightings, the ghost hunters who came on holiday. “Why? Is it just a cloak for harming people?”
“If someone claims to have seen a man trespassing, or in any nefarious activity, the credibility of their whole account is undermined if they also claim the trespasser was a ghost. That can be useful. As to why I chose my father’s ghost…” Arthur jabbed his index finger into the arm of his chair three times; an irritated gesture. “When I left Alspath for the second time, I had no one to encourage me in my mimicry as Valery did you from birth. I had to learn from first principles. No one’s words linger in the memory like those of a hated father. I made good use of that to practise mimicry. I first came here, the streets he used to walk, feigning man and dog together, to see who recognised me. Every horrified reaction convinced me of my growing skill. But eventually I had less need of him; there were new models for me to imitate. Until you came, and I wished to shock you into honesty.”
The dog, as Arthur imitated him, was bigger than the original. A boy’s memory of the beast, perhaps. Despite Arthur’s profession to honing his skills on Edward, Nora thought his mimicry of Valery was truer and more instinctive. Arthur’s habitual arrogance was unmistakably hers.
Nora said: “Valery wished I had been a boy. I think she would be happy to call you her son.”
Elated, he said: “Think of the joy we can share with each other.”
“I’m not staying in this city,” she said, meaning: I don’t want to stay with anyone who mimics my mother. Except part of her did want to stay. They had lived the same horrors, and though he had embraced it while she fled, that still created a bond. “As soon as the police let me, I’m catching the train out of here.”
“The train?” Crouch laughed. “Why would either of us ever need a train? The police can’t hold you anywhere. And I can find you, whichever city you’re in.”
The hairs across her arms prickled. She had kept telling herself she could leave; she had waited for the snow to melt, and then for the floods to drain, and now for Westall to be ruled Reid’s murderer. But there was no leaving, as long as any room contained a looking glass. Crouch would be able to find her until the day either he, or she, died.
“Mirrors are simple, though I only discovered so accidentally,” he said, standing up. “I had to learn their ways on my own. If you don’t know, I will show you. Where would you like to go?”
Earlier she had wished to find Berenice. Instinctively she shied from leading Crouch to the singer. Her mind drifted instead to the room where she had first watched, in a mirror, Berenice’s perfect face as she described the women she’d seduced and wished dead, as she pictured girls playing pattycake on a Rorschach card, as she dreamt of the soldier who stole her voice.
“I want to go to Leo’s flat,” Nora said.
She accepted Crouch’s hand.
6
They stood, side by side, before the largest mirror in the room: a circular one, three feet across.
“Do we have to transform?” Nora asked, because she had last seen him use the mirror as a beast.
“You can, but it isn’t essential,” he said. “I am I, whatever I imitate. Cloud the mirror with your breath. The cloud needn’t be very large, just the width of your hand.”
She obeyed, and raised her hand to the misted surface.
“Thinking of where you want to go is sufficient to take you,” he said. “Provided the mirror at your destination is uncovered.”
The space beneath her fingertips felt more like the air on a damp evening than brittle glass. She let her hand pass through, then her arm. The rest of her collapsed in on itself to fit through the gap. Crouch still held her other hand tightly; he followed her without letting go. They did not emerge on the other side immediately. Nora could see nothing, and felt weightless, though a persistent sensation of moving through space reminded her of vertigo. She would have asked Crouch if he was still there, had she been able to speak. She thought the question instead, and tried not to panic when she received no sign of his presence. Then she felt her hand slip through into ordinary atmosphere, and her arm, her shoulder and her head as they emerged from the long mirror in Leo’s apartment, until she stretched full length upon the floor, with Crouch seconds behind her. As they lay he needlessly raised a finger to his lips. The success of their passage had already left her uncertain what to say. Unlike the days of Berenice’s analysis the curtain no longer divided Nora from the rest of the consulting room – the rail appeared to have been taken down altogether. But the other features of the room were just as she recalled them. The couch was positioned as it always was, with Leo’s chair angled away from it. She realised this was the first time she had ever entered at night.
“He doesn’t sleep here any more,” Nora told Crouch at normal volume. “He bought a house when he married Berenice.”
But Crouch silently pointed at the line of light beneath the one internal door.
Leo must have stayed after seeing a client; maybe he had been completing work late, and decided he was too tired for the journey home. Or maybe he had been feeling nostalgic, for the days before his marriage. Nora supposed the discovery that one’s wife is unfaithful might sour a man towards the family home, though she had little remaining sympathy. It would be delicious, in confrontation, to reveal that she had been right all along about her nature. He had persuaded her she was deluded, but here, by her very presence, she had demonstrated he was wrong. She was a monster, in the company of another monster.
