MAP OF THE ISLAND
MAP OF THE CASTLE
‘Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?’
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1920
It was the day that stripped the joy from Christmas, or so he thought afterwards – everything a parody of what it should have been. The snow was dirty and trampled underfoot, the children frightened and cold, and even the robin – perched on a dustbin in the street – refused to sing, complicit in the horror that awaited him inside the house. And then there was her face, of course. For years to come, he would never be able to hear the carol that he was once so fond of without remembering the expression in her eyes, such a stark reminder of how little comfort and joy there really was in the world.
A crowd had already gathered outside by the time he arrived, a young detective sergeant, newly promoted and keen to make his mark. The house was in Notting Dale, a rookery of overcrowded streets and run-down buildings, and although the snow had covered some of the area’s shortcomings, it was still a wretched part of the city – one grim, monotonous row after another, untouched by any sort of spirit, seasonal or otherwise. He parked his car at the end of the street where Mollie Naylor and her children had lived, and walked over to the group of neighbours, all silently waiting for something to happen. Pushing his way through the onlookers, he could feel the hostility closing in on him, as cold on his face as the harsh December air. Somewhere over to his left, a man’s voice muttered a sarcastic happy Christmas.
A uniformed constable stood by the front door, his face as white as a sheet, and Penrose guessed that he was the local bobby whose misfortune it had been to pass by. ‘Who found them?’ he asked, after the briefest of introductions.
‘The next-door neighbour, sir. His wife heard a bit of shouting last night, but she didn’t do anything about it because she was on her own with the baby, and anyway, she didn’t want to get involved. Then this morning there was no sign of the children. She couldn’t hear a peep out of them through the walls and she thought that was strange, bearing in mind the pandemonium going on in her own house. You know how kids are at Christmas.’ He stopped suddenly, as if he had said something inappropriate, and Penrose guessed that the tragedy of what lay upstairs had struck him again, more forcefully than ever. ‘Anyway, she sent her husband round to check. The back door was unlocked and he soon found them, although he says he didn’t go any further than the first room. I believe him, too. You wouldn’t, if you didn’t have to.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Back at home, sir. Sick as a dog, he looked. Said he wanted to hug his kids. I’ve told him you’ll need a word.’
‘And no one else has been in?’
He shook his head. ‘No, only me. I thought I was going to have a bit of trouble keeping people out once word got round, but no one’s tried anything.’
‘That’s about the only thing left to them, I suppose – respect.’
‘Or fear, sir.’ Penrose looked at him sharply, and he shrugged. ‘That’s what it feels like to me. A woman who could do that to her children …’
‘It’s a bit early to be making assumptions like that, Constable, no matter how likely it looks. Did you know the family?’
‘No, sir. Not before today.’
But everyone would know them now, Penrose thought. He thanked the PC and walked past him into the house, closing the door behind him. There was an absolute silence inside, eerie and unsettling, and although he had reproached the constable for saying more than he should have, Penrose knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t respect that he had detected in the people who knew Mollie Naylor, and it wasn’t even a familiar antagonism towards the police; it was horror, in its purest form – a superstition of sorts, as if they could be tainted by the grief if they got too close to it, or perhaps simply a reluctant realisation that violence could be dragged from any human heart if the circumstances were bad enough. The stillness was oppressive, and Penrose had to force himself to move further into the room and shake off a feeling of dread. He shivered, knowing that the cold creeping through his bones was something more than the weather and the desperate state of the house had conspired to create.
There was just one room downstairs, a kitchen parlour containing bits of old furniture that had seen better days. The plaster was falling off the ceiling in places, and paper peeled from walls so damp that it was a wonder anyone had bothered to put it up in the first place. A piece of string had been hung from corner to corner to dry the washing, and the floorboards were rotten here and there, where water had repeatedly dripped onto them. Patches of mould gave the house a musty air, mixed with something metallic and sickening that was both out of place here and horribly familiar. At least the cold was good for something, he thought bitterly; the stench of death in summer would have been intolerable. As it was, the tiny, well-worn clothes still hanging near the hearth were unbearably poignant, and he had to turn away.
The general state of neglect was only to be expected: rents were so low after the war, and housing in such short supply, that landlords had no incentive to carry out even the most basic of repairs. Yet he couldn’t help noticing how clean the room was. There was a standing joke among his colleagues that a dark blue uniform would invariably be turned brown by any visit to a slum building, but so far the house was as cared for as the fabric of the building would allow, and this small, defiant hint of pride made the sign above the fireplace – ‘God Bless Our Home’ – something more than a bad joke.
And then there was the tree – a scrawny, grudging specimen of which Scrooge might have approved, but a tree nonetheless, decorated with love. Penrose walked over to look more closely at the stars and angels fashioned from bits of old material, at the cotton-wool snowman that hung from the top branch, the type of toy that had been so popular when he was a boy. He knelt down to see what was underneath – six presents of varying shapes, all wrapped in newspaper – and couldn’t remember ever having seen something so pathetically out of place. What could possibly have happened in just a matter of hours to change this family’s fate so dramatically?
There were two envelopes laid neatly on what passed for a kitchen table, perhaps containing the answer to his question, but first he needed to see the tragedy for himself. He climbed the dark, narrow staircase which led directly to the smaller of two bedrooms, and located the first bodies before he had reached the top step. Not even his imagination – fed by the brutality of war and his job – could have anticipated the horror of what he saw. Two little girls – twins, of around seven or eight – were tucked up in bed, their fair hair entangled on the pillow as they lay close together. Penrose could almost have believed they were sleeping quietly in each other’s arms were it not for the stain of livid red on their bedclothes. His hand shook as he pulled back the blood-stiffened sheet, but he forced himself to examine the wounds on their throats; the cuts were deep, with the windpipe and jugular veins almost severed in each case. Penrose could only pray that the work had been done too swiftly for the realisation of what was happening to sink in. Anything else was unthinkable. The girls were clothed in matching nightdresses and their likeness made a mirror image of their deaths: pale faces showing the first signs of discolouration, eyes closed to the horror of what had happened. As far as he could see, there were no bruises or other marks on their skin to suggest long-term abuse, and he wondered again what had brought them to this.