Читать книгу Mystery Lady - Paul Magrs - Страница 15

The very first story in the anthology was Vaughan Fretwell’s ‘Grub Street,’ which is about an elderly writer and how he lives out the last of his days in a house that’s falling apart and filled with old rubbish. He eventually gets consumed by the tide of decay that’s taking over his home in a very gory, nasty little story that did nothing to enliven my bus journey that snowy afternoon. I could see the piece had literary merit, but it wasn’t my kind of thing.

Maggots feature prominently in the narrative. The key moment in the tale is when the u-bend in the protagonist’s lavatory bursts open and millions of them come teeming out.

Did he live with these creatures in this filthy place all the time? But it’s hard to see how he could have done. No human being could live for very long in conditions like this… surely?

‘It’s disgusting in here,’ Cassandra gasped. ‘Can we go? I feel like those horrible things are crawling over my skin, and in my hair…’

I nodded tersely. But we had to be sure that the place truly was abandoned I explained to Cassie. If the old man was lying ill or injured somewhere and we failed to discover him, I would never forgive myself.

‘You’re too good for this world,’ she told me. ‘If it was just me, I’d be running a mile from here…’

There were just two other rooms. Both were stacked to the ceiling with boxes and old junk. How could anyone manage to live like this, I wondered, as we stood in the doorway of what should have been a bedroom. I played my torch beam over the cluttered surfaces. The bed was a tangle of filthy sheets with more used crockery abandoned in the folds. More maggots wriggled and seethed and I suppressed an urge to vomit.

I realised what it was that Henry Duke had been so disconcerted about. Something terrible had happened to his author, Mr Fretwell , but why hadn’t Henry come round here himself to check up on his well-being?

‘There’s nobody in the bedroom,’ Cassandra said. ‘There’s no one here at all. Can we go now, Dodie?’

‘The front room,’ I said. ‘The other door. We must check there, first.’

The last room was steeped in oily darkness, with the ragged curtains pulled tight. Only a little street light shone onto the wreckage. The shadows of the falling snow were the only movement.

‘Did you pick up the pages he’d written in crayon?’ asked Cassandra.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘They’ll need to be looked at very carefully when we get home. Everything is a clue.’

She sighed. ‘All these boxes and folders in here. They’re all filled with writing. Typescripts. A whole lifetime spent tapping away. Will there be any more clues here, do you think?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not staying around long enough to find out. If we see anything to do with the story he has in the anthology, that might be useful, perhaps…’

On the table in the middle of the room there were more used plates, a rock hard loaf and a rancid blob of butter in a dish. More horrid maggots, wriggling and twitching at us. There were letters, too. I recognised at once the distinctive letterhead belonging to Mephistopheles and Company. ‘Letters from Henry,’ I murmured. ‘His author’s agreement. And then reminders. Enquiries as to Vaughan’s well-being…’

Cassandra peered over my shoulder. ‘And this one! Look! This isn’t from Henry. It’s on ordinary writing paper. And it’s signed…’

‘Helen Spedding!’ I gasped. ‘Our rogue copy editor, whom Henry denies all knowledge of! She was writing to Vaughan, too…! Now, what does she say…’

I was just reaching out to flick sticky maggots off the paperwork when Cassandra gave out the most blood-curdling scream I had ever heard in my entire life. It gave me such a shock I almost bit off my own tongue.

‘What on Earth is the matter with you?!’

She could barely get the words out. ‘LOOK! Dodie…! Over there! In the chair by the window…’

In the darkest corner of the sitting room there was a high-backed armchair. What I’d taken for another shapeless heap of old junk wasn’t in fact junk at all.

It was the missing author himself.

Vaughan Fretwell was sitting there in his ratty dressing gown, staring at us blindly. Not moving an inch.

I suppressed my own urge to scream and silenced Cassie with a single glance.

‘I-is he dead..?’ she asked, in a voice almost too high-pitched for the human ear.

I took a step forward. There was something nasty spread all over the carpet. It squelched and sucked as we moved. The soles of my shoes felt sticky. I blocked out the thought of what might be causing that, and shone my torch beam into the face of that poor old man. It was a wretched sight. I’d never seen an expression filled with such abject misery before. His clawed hands gripped the arms of his chair and his jaw had dropped open, suspending him in a state of eternal astonishment. His eyes were dull and dark. He was dead.

‘Poor old soul,’ I said. ‘It looks like he gave up the ghost. He just sat down here and died. Loneliness or starvation or cold. It could be any of those things.’

‘How horrible,’ said Cassandra. ‘How long has he been here?’

‘Judging by the state of the place, and the dates on those letters, more than a couple of days, perhaps.’

‘But shouldn’t the smell be even worse than it is?’ she asked.

‘The place is freezing. That’s slowed down the rate of putrefaction, I suppose. We should be grateful for small mercies,’ I told her. ‘We’d best find a phone and get this reported to the police.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

I was about to turn away, when something absolutely extraordinary happened.

The dead man started speaking to us.

‘Mmmmmm…misssssss…’

His open jaw quavered. His dead lips trembled. I was transfixed by the glistening darkness inside his mouth. Was that something moving in there?

I gasped in horror, and Cassandra squealed.

The dead man’s mouth was filled with yellow maggots.

They spilled out of his lips and dropped into his lap. Dozens of them. They heaved and wriggled and tumbled out of his mouth.

A deathly voice issued from the corpse. .

‘Missss Golightly…’ he said in hushed and sibilant tones. ‘Thaaaank you for commmming to find meeee. Tooo late for meee. My time wasssss done and gone. But it isn’t tooooo late to save all the othersssss on the lissst….’

‘What list?’ I asked quietly.

‘You know what lisssst…’ he said. ‘The contentsssss page… Everyone on the contentssss page… Their lives are all forfeit. Incluuuuding yoursssss….’

A wave of dread passed through me. ‘But why?’ I gasped. ‘Who’d want to bump off short story writers?’

Vaughan Fretwell gave a ghastly sigh. ‘I have no more time. Pleeeassse, stop them, Misss Golightly. … Pleasssse sssstop these killingsssss…’

‘I will,’ I promised. ‘Oh, believe me, Mr Fretwell, I will!’

His voice died down to a whistling breath, which cut off abruptly. And then all was still.

Cassandra gasped, as if she’d been holding her breath for several minutes. I reached out and touched Fretwell’s icy hand. I had to flick several maggots off it first. I tried to twist it round to check for a pulse, but he was locked solid with rigor mortis.

‘He’s been dead for days,’ Cassie whispered. ‘And yet he was talking. You heard him, didn’t you? We both heard him?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed I did,’ I told her.

‘But that’s impossible!’ she burst out. ‘That can’t happen!’

I looked at Cassandra and wondered if she was about to break down. ‘It’s more common than you think, Cassie, dearest,’ I said, as kindly as I could. ‘Come on. We must let the police know what we’ve found here.’ I started walking for the door, and felt the crunch and squish of more maggots underfoot.

‘We can’t tell them that a dead man… spoke to us!’ Cassandra cried.

‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘They’d have us locked up. No, we’ve got to keep this one to ourselves. We can tell Timothy, of course, but that’s all.’

Cassandra was still staring at the corpse. His fate was almost the same as the protagonist’s in his own short story. When I looked back at him I caught a glimpse of more of those wriggling, twitching little creatures dropping from the corner of his eyeball. ‘Don’t you think we’re out of our depth?’ Cassie asked. ‘We’re more used to straightforward felonies and everyday dead bodies, aren’t we? Our investigations don’t usually deal with impossible things…’