Page 68

Nothing. I glanced at Miss Decima, who sat behind me in her bath chair, alongside the Ivys. I never knew a basement could be so crowded.

‘We know you’re in there, Mr Benson,’ I said, knocking again. ‘Time to come out now.’

Nothing. I sighed and rolled up my sleeves. ‘Right. Stand back, everyone!’

I cleared a path through the Ivys long enough for me to knock down the door. I was starting to regret my choice by the time I reached the far wall, but luckily, when I turned around, Miss Decima had already picked the lock and swung the door open.

‘Hurry up, Hercules,’ she muttered. ‘He’s getting away.’

Mr Benson was trying to climb out of his basement window. I ran inside and grabbed his ankles, dragging him back.

‘Stop it! Get off me!’ he cried.

He was kicking and thrashing like a feral dog. I planted him on his feet, but suddenly he swung his arm round in an arc – I saw the glint of the knife at the final second. He wasn’t the first person to try to stab me, so I grabbed his wrist and bit on it savagely. He shrieked and the penknife fell to the floor with a clatter. Ivy Butterfingers grabbed it, then dropped it, picked it up and dropped it again, so I flung Mr Benson into a chair before he could lunge for it. Four more Ivys pinned down his arms and legs, and Miss Decima was wheeled in front of him with a face like the End of Days.

‘Mr Benson,’ she said calmly, ‘I wish I could say that it was nice to see you again, but unfortunately that is not true at the best of times, and even less so now, when you so closely resemble a pillowcase filled with shit.’

She was right. Mr Benson looked even worse than when I’d seen him peering through his curtains on Tuesday. He looked – and smelt – terrible. ‘Let me go!’ he begged.

I coughed politely. ‘Mr Benson, on Saturday morning, you said that you were on duty for twelve hours a day. On Sunday, you said you didn’t clock off until nine in the evening. But I haven’t seen you at your desk once in the last four days. Delivery boys have been bringing packages and telegrams to our front door every morning. From the looks of it, it’s because you’ve spent all of that time locked in here with that knife. So come on, then – who are you hiding from?’

Mr Benson’s face had looked waxy when we arrived; now it looked like a funeral candle. It took him a while to summon up the courage needed just to get the words out.

‘They said they’d kill me,’ he whispered. ‘They held a knife to my face and said they’d cut out my tongue if I didn’t do what they said. And then they’d find where my mother lived, and do it to her, too, and worse.’

‘Who did?’ Miss Decima barked.

Mr Benson was trembling as he spoke. ‘I – I don’t know, I didn’t even know they were in there! I went down to empty out the trunk room, and when I opened it, they were in there. I was trying to get rid of all that stuff I’d hidden – the whisky and corned beef. It was just an empty trunk room that no one was using! I didn’t see the harm in using it, given all I’ve done for this building since –’

My mind raced to keep up. ‘There were men hiding in one of the trunk rooms on Saturday?’ I asked.

Mr Benson nodded frantically. ‘Three of them. And another one lying on the ground, tied up. I tried to run off but they dragged me in here and … and said what they’d do to me, if I ever told anyone what I’d seen. They said I had to act normally afterwards, like nothing had happened, and do what I’d do anyway, or … They don’t know I’ve been hiding down here, do they? Oh God, if they do …’

I slapped him. ‘The men! Where did they go?’

Mr Benson swallowed, shaken. ‘T-two of them left and one of them stayed in here with me to make sure I didn’t run away. I heard all these footsteps in the basement and then shouts outside, and the man told me to count to a hundred before I left the room. I finished counting and looked outside and – and there was that dead policeman lying there, wasn’t there? Slumped in the corner and bleeding.’ He fought for the words. ‘I saw you run up to him – I was watching from the door, in the shadows. I knew what’d happen next. The coppers would come and search the premises, and then they’d find all my stuff in that trunk room and I’d lose my job, wouldn’t I? I had to hide it! I couldn’t risk being arrested and those men coming back … They’re not coming back here, are they?’

I was barely listening to him now. I was thinking about the trunk room that I’d hidden in yesterday – the empty one in the basement next door. Something had been scratching at the back of my head the whole time I was there, demanding to be noticed. And I had just worked out what it was.

I turned from Mr Benson and marched out of the room, sidling through the Ivys. I walked all the way to Miss Decima’s trunk room. It was still completely empty – all of her things were still piled up outside, stacked floor to ceiling in a heap in the corner.

But I wasn’t interested in her cases. I was interested in what was behind them.

I grabbed the top case from the stack and heaved with all my might, bringing down the rest of them with it. And there, hidden in the corner, was another door.

That was what had felt so strange to me, when I was hiding next door. The two basements had the exact same layouts. But the trunk room that I’d hidden inside was tucked into the corner – a room that didn’t seem to exist in our own basement. Because Mr Benson had carefully hidden it behind a stack of cases – just like Cath had used the wardrobe to cover up the door to Éimhear Ó Ceallaigh’s bedroom.

I reached out and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked: the door swung open. The tiny, dark space inside was piled up with wooden crates, stacked into shapes that slowly emerged from the shadows. Three chairs, a makeshift table. Three people were sat around it.

I only recognized one of them. But, to be perfectly frank, I already knew who the others were. I knew exactly who was going to be in that room before I opened the door.

Lavinia Welford. Theodora Gussett. Éimhear Ó Ceallaigh. The three missing women stared out from the shadows, their eyes filled with terror, and the carpet bag placed on the table between them.

50

Thursday, 22 June, 9.32 a.m.

‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Decima, ‘it would be best to begin with an explanation.’