Part 4 The Coroner’s Handmaiden

Grainne held tightly to Neil’s .hand as they left the parked car and immediately got swallowed up in the darkness of the back tree lined lane that lead to back of River House.

Neil slipped his arm around her waist. “It’s a nice night. Why don’t we sit for a while,” he coaxed steering Grainne towards a clump of trees along the avenue that bordered the river.

Below, Grainne could see the silvery sheen of the moon on the water. “Romantic,” Neil murmured lowering his head to kiss her. Grainne stiffened. She wondered if the poachers would be out tonight. Maybe they were already down there. She listened. She was sure she could hear the soft slurp the oars made as they slid through the water.

After a while she grew tired of Neil’s fumbling.” I’d better go in,” she said. Scrambling to her feet she brushed the grass and leaves from her clothes and hair and rearranged her clothes.

“Keep off the gravel. Walk the edge of the flowerbeds until we reach the back door,” she said in a low voice.

She hurried Neil into the shadows of the house as the moon came out from behind the clouds. Its round bright face illuminated the grounds and lingered on the green moss that clung around the lower walls.

Grainne held her breath and waited for the door to be flung to the wall and her employer to demanded to know what she was doing bringing a man home.

Encouraged by her nearness Neil grabbed her and squashed her against the shrubbery that clung to the side of the old house. His rough probing kiss left Grainne breathless.

“Stop it. Dr Hammy is in his hidey hole,” she whispered. Peeved, Neil drew away and huffed. Giddy with the kiss and almost weak with relief that she hadn’t had to pass the big oak tree alone, she smiled at him in the moonlight.

“It’s not you,” she soothed, aware she still needed him to check there was nobody under her bed. She shivered. “I don’t like the way the moon shines on that,” she said in a low voice glancing at the dark shape of the crumbling statue jutting up above the tall weeds in the old garden.

Neil pulled her close to him again.”This place is haunted,” he teased pretending to make ghostly flapping motions with his arms. “That garden used to be an old graveyard. I often heard me granda tell yarns about years ago when an old Colonel in the army was stationed here. He brought some kind of disease back from the war in India. The family and servants died and he had them buried in that garden.”

Grainne glared at him. “I don’t think you are one bit funny,” she hissed.

“I’m not being funny. You ask some of the older people, like Annie Bailey, the next day you’re down the street, she’ll tell you. They even buried servants alive that displeased them.”

Neil’s face was in shadows. Grainne couldn’t tell if he was serious or just frightening her to get even for earlier when she pulled away from him. “That’s why nobody that works here stays here for very long. “You’re bound to get in their bad books sooner or later…and then…”

Grainne stilled “You made that up, just now,” she hissed wrenching away from him. “Go on. Go home. I’ll go in the back door and check my room myself,” she said angrily just as the door of Dr Hammy’s work room began to open.

At first Grainne thought it was her imagination so stealthily did it open. Slowly, very slowly, the green door opened as if the person on the other side was being extra vigilant.

Neil thrust Grainne back against the wall of the house. Still as death they watched as someone stepped out. Grainne was pressed so close to Neil she could hear his heart beating erratically. She dug her nails into his arm and gave an audible gasped. Quickly he put his hand over her mouth.

She stared eyes wide over the width of Neil’s hand. It was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman but whomever, or whatever it was wasn’t walking on the gravelled drive she thought as the figure moved soundlessly into the disused graveyard.

Neil disentangled himself, removed his hand from Grainne lips and skirting around the edge of the gravel after the receding figure.

Immobilized with fear Grainne realised the moon had deserted her plunging the place into blackness. “Neil,” she hissed frantically, “they’re coming back. They’ve left the door open!” But there was only silence.

Neil was gone.

Grainne’s hand found the latch of the back door. She pressed against it. It was locked. Her heart beating like a drum she leaned her weight against it hoping and praying it was just stiff with the wet weather. It didn’t budge.

Turning, she groped her way along the wall until she reached the corner of the house that lead to the front door. The matron would be outraged at her ringing the front door bell this late at night but she didn’t care. She hesitated; remembering what Neil had said about the fate of servants’ that displeased their master.

She stopped. Before her stretched the dark outline of the silent house and the tree lined drive. What should she do? What if there was somebody waiting in the bushes – waiting to snatch her away? Neil’s mocking stories filled her head again. What if it was true and Emily Anderson was planning to bury her alive” The fish supper she had ate earlier churned in her stomach,

She desperately wanted to be inside the house. Should she chance it? She’d have to wait for Emily to come down and let her in. Fear made her weak and she turned back. Why were the doors locked? Had she misjudged the time? Was it later than she thought? Or, had Dr Hammy got mixed up this year again and put the clock forward instead of back and thinking she was in locked up the whole house.

Breathing hard she slid back along the wall until she was facing Dr Hammy’s workrooms. Was there a connecting door from the workrooms to the main house or did the doctor come and go through the back door? He does both, she thought. Hope rose in her

. The half open door was emitting a soft thudding sound as the soft wind coming off the river nudged it against the jamb. A faint sliver of light lay like a narrow moonbeam on the step. She’d be safe there and out of the dark. She hesitated. In the eighteen months she’d worked for the Anderson’s it was the one and only place she’d never been expected to clean.

Somewhere near her the grass rustled. Grainne stiffen. Was it a fox or a rat? Or someone is hiding? Spurred into action Grainne stumbled across the gravelled path and into the workroom.

She found herself in a small hall.

As her eyes adjusted she noticed there were two doors, one directly behind her and the other down the hall. A strange smell permeated her senses. She drew in her breath. It was an odour familiar to her. She frowned. It came to her. It was the smell that came off the pathologist who came to discuss cases with Dr Hammy. Sometimes Emily Anderson had the same smell when she had been to the morgue at the hospital.

Unbidden the old stories about washing the dead her grandmother used to tell rose up like spectres in front of Grainne and mixed in with the smell. Her legs wobbled. She wrenched her mind away but her granny’s Donegal accent with its slow drawl filled her head. Her stomach heaved.

She couldn’t get the image of her grandmother’s hands washing dead bodies out of her mind’s eye.

The crawling knot of fear she had always experienced as she lain in bed in the room above the kitchen with its small oil lamp flickering on the walls and roof listening to her granny’s voice following her into nightmare sleep ,came over her.

 

A noise behind the door down the hall alerted her that someone was in there. Quickly she put her hand on the door behind her and staggered backwards into the centre of a small room lit by candle light.

She breathed a sigh of relief at the brightness. She looked around. A door, she hoped lead to the main part of the house stood closed in a corner of the room.

She turned back to the yellow glow. Rows of glowing lights flickered and spread out like the orange glow from like the stand her granny lit candles from in the chapel to help the souls of sinners out of Purgatory.

It was a second before she realised each light was radiating from the dead eyes and gaping mouth of a skull.

 

She’s coming round,” Emily Anderson’s voice said with relief.

Grainne eyes snapped open. “The skulls…”

The matron made a tut, tuting sound. “What skulls? “You’ve had a fall hit your head…”

Grainne twisted around and realised she was in her own bed. “In Dr Hammy’s workroom. Real skulls with yellow light coming out of their dead eyes and gaping mouths,” Grainne shrieked.

“Turnips and pumpkins– our dramatic society props for Halloween,” Emily said quickly. “Surely you didn’t think they were real skulls,” she chided. “Now, there will be no more silly talk of such things. It’s time all decent folk were asleep in their beds,” the matron said nodding her husband from the room.

 

Dr hammy lingered at the foot of Grainne’s bed. Small pieces of cake crumb clung to his jumper.

He let his eyes travel up Grainer’s legs to where he could see the top of her stocking held by a dainty suspender. He licked his lips. When he had opened the adjoining door between his workroom and his play room he had been surprised and then pleased to see his handmaiden, as he thought of her. It had been such a long time since he’d had a playmate….

And then Emily had come and spoiled it as she always did, he thought.