Stephen Jones - Dark Terrors 3 - The Gollancz Book of Horror

The following morning, Cynthia Peeling offered to accompany the Tizards to Wren’s Nest to look over Emma’s belongings, so they could decide what they wanted to keep once the police had finished with everything. Cynthia thought this was the most forlorn and depressing of post mortem tasks.

Mr Tizard opened the front door of Wren’s Nest and the three of them shuffled inside. This was only the third time Cynthia had ever set foot in the place. Emma had often popped over to share a quick coffee with her neighbour, especially in the summer, but reciprocal invitations had been non-existent. It certainly couldn’t have been because Emma was ashamed of her home. The walls were papered in the most modern, expensive prints that money could buy and the furnishings bore the stamp of a top interior design house.

‘What a peculiar smell!’ Mr Tizard exclaimed as he went into the lounge. Cynthia Peeling followed him and sniffed.

‘What is it?’ queried Emma’s mother querulously from the hall.

‘Nothing alarming!’ Cynthia was conscious of her voice being too loud and jolly. ‘Some kind of perfume. A bit stale, that’s all. The windows have been closed.’ The smell was strange. It caught at the back of the throat, half pleasant, half noxious. Had Emma Tizard been burning incense of some kind? Cynthia firmly dismissed a rising sense of unease.

‘She was such a tidy girl,’ Mrs Tizard said, standing pathetically in the doorway, holding her handbag in front of her. The place didn’t look lived in. No ornaments, no books, no magazines, no sense at all of occupation.

It looks like a show home, Cynthia thought. She examined the gleaming hi-fi system and television. It appeared they had never been used.

‘I don’t think she lived in this room much,’ Cynthia said.

Moving close together, the three of them advanced into the dining-room. Here, the same clinical tidiness prevailed. In a drawer, Mr Tizard discovered a stainless steel cutlery set still wrapped in plastic. ‘Emma didn’t entertain much, it seems,’ he said.

‘No, she never brought friends home, not that we saw,’ Cynthia Peeling said. She eased herself past the Tizards and went quickly through the dove grey and pale lemon kitchen that bristled with factory-new appliances. ‘Perhaps we’ll find more sense of her in her workroom.’

When Cynthia opened the door to Emma’s workroom, all three of them uttered shocked sounds. Not because of anything unpleasant exactly, but just because of the contrast between the workroom and the rest of Emma’s home. There was a choking stench of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol. Thick blue velvet curtains were drawn across the window. Cynthia quickly went to open it, craving fresh air. She threw back the curtains. Beyond them, the window was frosted. It was not a big room, perhaps partitioned off from the bathroom. There was barely space for the large, ancient desk under the window and the huge cupboard against the far wall. Bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, apart from a place opposite the door where a huge, gilt-framed mirror hung. Papers were strewn everywhere; ashtrays overflowed on to elderly coffee-mug rings; an easel stood folded in a corner draped with rags. Empty gaps in the clutter suggested items which had been taken away by the police.

’Yes, well, I certainly think we have a sense of Emma here,’ Mr Tizard said dryly.

‘You think so?’ Cynthia Peeling was not so sure. What they had found here had little link with the girl she’d thought Emma to be. It was so sloppy, almost aggressively so. Books leaned everywhere on the shelves; there were volumes on mysticism, erotica, occultism and a pile of cheap, tawdry novels. Cynthia shook her head. She picked up a small book that had been lying open on the desk. A chapter entitled ‘Higher Levels of Awareness’ had been heavily underlined in places. ‘Polarity disposition. Ritual dissimulation and embodiment.’ It made no sense but still disturbed her, made her skin prickle. Unpleasant thoughts were starting to form and, superstitiously, Cynthia had no wish to think ill of the dead.

Mrs Tizard was collecting up a selection of gin bottles from the floor. Her mouth had become a thin, disapproving line. Cynthia had no wish to speak to her.

‘Well,’ Cynthia said to Mr Tizard, hating the brightness in her voice, ‘it would appear Emma lived mostly in this room. I told you she worked very hard. It’s not really surprising that she allowed the place to get a bit messy.’

Mr Tizard didn’t respond. He had picked up a sheaf of sketches and was impatiently leafing through them. ‘Do you know this man?’ He thrust a sketch into Cynthia’s hands.

‘Er. no. I don’t think so,’ she replied, feeling heat suffuse her face. The subject of the drawing was naked, sporting an undisguised erection. She dropped the paper quickly on to the desk. Mr Tizard had slumped heavily into the swivel chair in front of the desk. Cynthia empathized with what he must be feeling. She started to tidy the scattered papers into one pile. Apart from reams of illegible notes, there must have been hundreds of sketches and water-colours, many of them depicting the same naked man. Some of his poses were so explicit, Cynthia had to keep averting her eyes while tidying them. She was also distressed to find his face becoming more and more familiar to her. Could it be Michael Homey? No, of course not, and yet she’d seen no other man with whom Emma had had any connection. Apart from these disturbingly erotic sketches, there were also many water-colours similar to the one Emma had given to Cynthia; strange, unearthly landscapes in flowing, muted colours; ethereal beings floating in clouds that looked like palaces. Holding them up one by one, Cynthia was tempted to keep some of these for herself. Emma Tizard had been unbelievably talented. Then Cynthia came upon a series of violent, horrifying scenes, where grinning demonic shapes inflicted torture on bodies that spouted blood, and in some cases, entrails. She glanced through them with horrified fascination. No one had spoken in the room for several minutes. Mrs Tizard opened the cupboard. She uttered a dismal squeak and Cynthia turned round.

‘What is it?’

‘I… I don’t know. Not really.’ The door swung back and forth. A yellowed skull, perhaps of a ram or goat, was the first thing to catch Cynthia’s eye. Everything else in the cupboard looked as if it belonged to a mediaeval apothecary. There were jars of roots and powders, an ornate, spired incense burner (that explained the smell), curly-handled knives, an abundance of other strange paraphernalia. A bizarre diagram, surrounded by what appeared to be foreign words, was scrawled in chalk on the back of the cupboard. ‘Why?’ Mrs Tizard said, weakly. ‘Why?’

Mr Tizard led her quickly from the house.

In the comfort of Cynthia’s front room, Mrs Tizard announced that as soon as the police had finished with her daughter’s belongings, she wanted the lot burned. There was nothing of Emma there that she wished to keep. To lose a daughter under such awful circumstances was bad enough, but to discover she had some kind of weird alter ego was even worse. Cynthia was now convinced that sweet, innocent Emma had become unwittingly involved with unsavoury characters, who had undoubtedly been instrumental in her death. An ingrained sense of decency, along with her superstitious dread, made her feel that no one but the three of them should ever know exactly what had been found in Wren’s Nest. Let it be burned and forgotten. Nobody could do anything about it now.

Some weeks later, after the inquest had taken place, and press interest had died down, Mr Tizard came down alone to see to the disposal of Emma’s belongings. The police had come up with no further leads, and it seemed the murder would remain a mystery for ever. The Tizards had put Wren’s Nest on the market. Obeying, or agreeing with, his wife’s desires, Mr Tizard packed everything, including Emma’s smart, expensive clothes, into plastic bin liners. Cynthia Peeling drove him in her estate car up to the borough dump and disposed of the lot. It was late afternoon by the time the job was finished. Cynthia was in two minds about what they were doing. She couldn’t help feeling it was wrong that all Emma’s beautiful clothes and the more expensive of her books had been destroyed, yet she must respect the parents’ wishes, and part of her could understand why they felt the need to dispose of everything so finally. However, what really went against the grain was throwing all Emma’s drawings and paintings into a skip along with other paper rubbish. Whatever the Tizards might think of the subject matter, Emma had been a superb artist and her work deserved to survive her death. For this reason, Cynthia surreptitiously rolled up about two dozen of Emma’s paintings and stowed them in her bedroom while Mr Tizard was occupied elsewhere. Why she also pocketed the book that had been lying open on Emma’s desk, she didn’t consciously examine.