It was past four, the mist-thickened day starting to dim into night, and the twilight cast shadows that gathered in the corners and shifted around him. It would be very easy to imagine them moving as he walked, as Hawley’s living darkness or just a mass of thick-legged spiders.
“Oh, stop it,” he muttered under his breath. He had no need to do Wynn’s work by scaring himself half to death.
He made his way around the west wing as best he could, trying every door he came across, and then went up into the central tower. He didn’t really think Dash was being kept here—there were only four rooms on Elise and Bram’s floor; they would surely have heard shouts or thumping—but he was trying to be thorough and methodical, and that meant every door. One led to a stair, and curiosity took him upward, into what was clearly the cupola.
This floor looked unused, with a few old pieces of furniture haphazardly stowed by the walls and a lot of dust on the floor. There were two doors. Zeb opened the first and saw a dark lumber room, cluttered and cobwebbed. He shut the door hastily and turned to the second.
It was locked, but the key was in the keyhole. He turned it.
This room was also dark, but Zeb could just about make outwhat looked like a bed. There was no gas mantle, but a candlestick stood on a little table near the door. He patted his pockets for matches, found a box, and lit the candle. It flared, bringing the room to life, and Zeb sucked in a breath so hard it hurt.
“What the—”
The room had a single bed frame, a small table, a metal chamber pot, a single window covered by crossed iron bars. That was all. There was no place to put things, and no things to be put.
And there was writing all over the walls. It went from the floor to a few inches higher than Zeb’s head—perhaps the full reach of a short person on tiptoe—leaving only a strip at the top where the writer apparently couldn’t reach, and every single accessible inch was written and rewritten on, in layer after layer of scrawled pencil or chalk or even carving, viciously dug into the plasterwork with a nail or scratched with a pin. It was the work of years, Zeb thought as he turned and stared. Someone had been in this room for years, with nothing else to do but write on the walls.
He moved towards the walls, not wanting to see, compelled to look. It was hard to make out anything in the overlapping jagged scribbles at first, but he held the candle close, and saw the words emerge, horribly and urgently repetitive, like the patterns on the wallpaper downstairs.
LET ME OUT
LET ME OUT
LET ME OUT
There were other words too.Walter, gouged into the walls,andWilfred. Pig. Die.That was Wynn’s father. And again and again,Laura. Laura. Laura.
Laura’s mother, Walter’s widow, the nameless housemaid. Wynn’s father had called her mad and kept her confined to the house. She had been locked up here for seven years to keep her legacy, Wyckham money, in the family.
Cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d. Zeb could feel the sensations building up in his own muscles, the angry jittery cramping misery of being trapped. If it had been him in this room, this long, he’d have gone mad. He’d have smashed the window in sheer, unbearable desperation to get out, no matter if the only way was down—
There were bars on the window. She couldn’t jump. They hadn’t even let her do that.
The walls closed in on him like the squeeze of a giant fist. He stood in the room, hands shaking, the wobbling candle making light and shadows jump on the walls that shrieked rage and pain and despair, and he didn’t notice the tears in his eyes till they started to fall.
***
Zeb did not want to go down to dinner. He didn’t want to see anyone in his family ever again.
He’d more or less run down from the terrible tower room and headed straight through the hall and out the front door. He’d wanted to walk for hours, or days. Unfortunately, it was soddingcold, very dark, and unpleasantly thick with cobwebby mist, and after about a minute outside, the horror of confinement started to be replaced with thoughts of getting lost in the grounds and death by exposure.
He returned, chilled and damp, paced the halls a bit more, and finally went and sat in his room for what must have been an hour, running his beads through his fingers, staring at the blank walls, imagining words. He’d heard nothing from Gideon and he wanted,neededto get out of here with an urgency that clawed at him. He could not spend another day in this accursed house with its pestilential inhabitants, or he would rip off one of Wynn’s limbs and use it to beat his brother to a pulp. Or, at least, would stand in strong danger of losing his temper.
Elise had listened. She’d help him leave, hopefully with Gideon, and the first place he was going to go after that would be a lawyer, or a private enquiry agent, or the police. He would tell people and someone would surely do something about some of this, even if Zeb wasn’t quite sure of what he could prove to be a crime. It was all too wrong and he couldn’t bear much more.
He dressed, more out of excessive nervous energy than enthusiasm. That involved a lengthy search for the shirt studs he still hadn’t picked up, but even so, he found himself first down. Apparently everyone else was even less enthused about the evening to come than he was.
Gideon appeared in the drawing room a few moments later with a rat-trap mouth suggesting he had also had a trying day. He glanced swiftly around, and strode to join Zeb at the drinkstable.
“I have to get out of here,” Zeb said without preamble. “Any luck? Hello.”
“I’ve achieved nothing. Wynn kept me busy all day. Which, in the circumstances—” Gideon rolled his eyes.
“Has something happened?”
“Did you not hear the commotion? Good Lord, I thought people would hear it in Exeter.” Gideon poured himself a very generous sherry. “This afternoon, Bram and Wynn had a long discussion about your and Hawley’s failings. As a result, Wynn said he would make Bram his heir if he divorced Mrs. Bram and promised to marry Jessamine as soon as decency allows. He agreed.”
“Of course he did. I hope he enjoys seeing his divorce proceedings in the papers,” Zeb said. “But—”
