Robin Jarvis - The Fatal Strand

However, just when she had decided on the latter course and was pressing her ear to the grubby paintwork, the door was yanked open again, and both her guest and the Chief Inspector bumped straight into her.

‘And you say that I can start right away?’ Austen Pickering asked, pulling on his mackintosh and taking no notice of the large woman in his excitement.

Already striding down the stairs, Hargreaves nodded briskly. ‘They want to see you at once, Sir,’ he said. ‘Made that point very clear when I got the message.’

‘Why now, I wonder?’ the little man gabbled. ‘I’ve written scores of letters, but never received any reply. Has something happened? I mean, why should you come and tell me this? Why the police? I don’t understand. There’s not been an … incident, has there?’

Pausing at the foot of the stairs, Hargreaves stared up at him. ‘ She’ll tell you everything you need to know, Sir,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, this isn’t police business.’

‘Then why …?’

‘Just come with me, please.’

And so Austen Pickering was bundled out of The Bella Vista , and the frosted glass of the front door rattled as he slammed it after him.

Standing in the hallway an elderly, kindly-looking woman gazed after the departing pair, then turned her attention to the staircase to see her daughter Gloria come stomping down.

‘I’m not having this!’ Mrs Rosina stormed. ‘Coppers turning up at all hours – what’ll the neighbours think?’

‘But you don’t speak to any of them, Glor,’ her mother put in. ‘You don’t like them. “Nowt but thieves and spongers,” you said.’

Fumbling with the lighter, her daughter finally lit the cigarette and drew a long, dependent breath. ‘Go an’ play your seventy-eights,’ she exhaled.

‘Don’t you want that cuppa then?’

‘What I want,’ Mrs Rosina snapped between gasps, ‘is to know what’s been going on in my own house! Well, I’m going to find out. No snotty policeman’s going to tell me what I can and can’t know about them what stop here. Where’s them spare keys?’

With her glowing cigarette bobbing before her face, she stamped back up the stairs and her elderly mother tutted after her.

‘I don’t think you should go through that man’s things, Glor,’ she advised. ‘’Tain’t right.’

But Mrs Rosina was too vexed and curious to listen – besides, it wouldn’t be the first time she had rifled through the private belongings of one of her guests. It really was fascinating, not to say revealing, to pry into what some of these people lugged about with them.

In the hallway, the landlady’s mother gave one final shake of her head and ambled back to her own little bedroom. ‘Blood will tell,’ she lamented. ‘Glor’s just as bad as she ever was.’

Kneeling in front of a large open cupboard in the Websters’ cramped attic apartment, Edie Dorkins sucked her teeth and surveyed the cluttered bric-a-brac of Miss Veronica’s belongings.

Amongst the dusty, neglected jumble were some interesting odds and ends, culled from every age of The Wyrd Museum’s existence. A rolled up bundle of parchments, tied up with a lavender ribbon, revealed a collection of sonnets, letters and poems from the quills of the finest poets and playwrights. There were tiny framed miniatures of all three sisters; the women still appeared old, even though they had posed for the portraits several centuries ago. A purse of moth-eaten velvet contained diverse and sumptuous pieces of jewellery; from quite plain and chunky lumps of twisted gold, to single earrings or broken bracelets which sparked with finely cut gems.

Edie coveted this fabulous treasure and stuffed many of the shiny trinkets into her coat pocket, before crawling a little deeper into the cupboard to see what else she could discover in this fascinating hoard. To her annoyance, her progress was impaired by countless stone jars and bottles which the woman had squeezed into every conceivable space. Edie resented them; they were maddeningly in the way and did not contain anything that appealed to her poaching piracy.

Amongst those many pots were the late Miss Veronica’s innumerable aids to beauty. There were tins of flour and chalk which she had applied to her face; she had fancied that the dramatically bloodless effect granted her a much younger appearance. This grotesquerie was always heightened by a great daubing stripe of garish red from a tub of vermilion ooze, which the old woman had spread thickly across her lips, making her look like a nightmarish clown.

In another vessel, Edie found the lumps of charcoal which Miss Veronica had used to mark out her eyebrows, and a big bottle of green glass contained an unctuous, tarry mixture with which she had dyed her hair. Carelessly piled on top of each other, these receptacles were every shape and size, and maintained a brittle balance which Edie’s foraging threatened to capsize with each fresh incursion.

Sitting in the armchair next to the cold hearth, latticed by the grey light of the early morning which shone weak and pale through the one diamond-crossed window, Miss Ursula tapped her fingers upon the worn upholstery, patiently counting out each slow second. No expression modelled her pinched, camel-like features, but her raw eyes were a testament to the suffering she had endured during the recent hours.

A clattering avalanche of pots and jars caused the woman to jerk her head back and look across at the young girl half hidden inside her dead sister’s cupboard.

‘You will find nothing of note in there, Edith,’ she told her.

Edie rolled backwards and lay on her side, playfully flicking a dead, dusty mouse she had found across the threadbare carpet.

‘Where’s Celandine?’ she asked.

‘I allowed her free movement through the museum. I think it best for her. You know how she likes to wander, talking to the exhibits – it may help her come to terms with … what has occurred.’

Miss Ursula’s eyes fell upon the empty grate by the armchair and gave a slight shudder as she stared at those cold ashes and cinders. ‘Not since that day when we first came upon the forest clearing have I known such distress.’

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Edie regarded the black-gowned woman and said, ‘Tell me about the Loom.’

The faintest of creases furrowed Miss Ursula’s forehead. ‘You already know everything. The Loom was made from the first bough hewn from the World Tree by the Lord of the Frost Giants.’

‘But what was it like?’ the child persisted.

Miss Ursula sank back into the chair. ‘There are no adequate words to explain,’ she said. ‘From the moment I set it in motion and the glittering threads ran through the warp, everything was enslaved, including myself. Many have cursed my name since that day, but had I balked at the deed, then the lords of the ice would have destroyed the last vestige of Yggdrasill, and the end would have come before there had barely been a beginning. What choice had I?’

Edie reached for a small, unglazed ceramic jar which fitted pleasantly in her palm, and toyed with the idea of popping the dead mouse inside it.

‘Was you scared?’ she asked, irked to find that the lid of the jar was stuck in place.

‘Terrified,’ Miss Ursula confessed. ‘I had taken it upon myself and my sisters to become Mistresses of Destiny. Yet I was exhilarated also, and when the first glimmering strands began to weave the untold history of the world, it was the most entrancing sight I had ever beheld, outshining even the spectacle of Askar beneath the dappling sky of the great ash’s leaves.’