28

By the time I had finished explaining my plan to Jane, it was well after the hour for the patients’ evening meal to start and it was my turn to supervise tonight. I went first to my own room, where I picked up the heavy iron poker from the grate. I took a pair of socks from their drawer and wrapped one around the ash-covered end of the poker that went into the fire and secured it by tying the other sock around it. Then I slipped the poker into the back of the waistband of my pants and pulled my jacket over it so it could not be seen. I made my way to the patients’ dining room, hoping the stiffness in my back the poker caused was not too apparent to anyone else. I paused before I went in, composing myself for what was to come. I needed to be poker-faced as well as poker-backed.

I was met with an impudent glare from O’Reilly. ‘You’re late,’ she snapped.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs O’Reilly. I can promise you on anything you care to name that it will never, ever happen again.’ And I gave her my most winning smile. I was pleased to see how this puzzled her and how throughout the meal she continued every now and then to glance at me, trying to figure out what I was at. I maintained an easy smile, although my heart was a steam engine pounding away in my chest and the blood was singing in my temples. It was a desperate plan I had dreamed up on the spur of the moment and there were so many ways in which it could go wrong. My mind was feverishly working it through, trying to spot the inevitable flaws. There were none I could think of, but from past history I knew only too well that that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Eventually the meal came to an end. Because of the holiday, the patients were not to be put straight to bed but were to have an hour’s singing in the day room. While the attendants got them in line and shepherded them out, I watched as in the background O’Reilly slipped away into the back corridor. I waited until the patients had gone and the room was empty, then I went through the back door to look for O’Reilly. I could hear her in the kitchen along the corridor, evidently loading the tray of food she would be taking upstairs.

I stepped again into the disused stockroom and shut the door behind me. I was counting on O’Reilly not thinking I’d be fool enough to try the same trick twice and lock me in again, in which case all would be lost and I would swing.

I heard her steps in the corridor and then starting up the first flight of stairs. I tiptoed from the room to the foot of the staircase, where I listened until I heard her begin to ascend to the third floor, and then, quiet as I could, I crept up to the second. There I stopped and listened again until O’Reilly’s footsteps sounded in the corridor above, about to mount the stairs to the attic. Then I abandoned all caution and took the stairs at a run. I pounded up them so fast O’Reilly had only just rounded the turn to the attic. She stopped, tray in her hands, alarmed at the sound of the oncoming footsteps.

‘You!’ she said, as I rushed up the bottom flight.

‘Yes, me!’ I hissed, and as I reached the top step, I put my hand behind me and pulled out the poker.

‘What do you think –’ She tried to retreat, but fell backwards against the steps. She dropped the tray, which clattered toward me, soup and water spilling everywhere, tin plates and cup and water jug ringing on the bare wooden steps. When everything had finally come to rest, we both watched spellbound as a solitary apple bounced down from step to step like a child’s ball and vanished somewhere below.

‘I am come to give you a treatment!’ I cried with a flourish of the poker.

She turned and tried to scramble up the stairs, which was just the way I wanted her. I brought the poker down with all my might upon the back of her skull, so hard I could hear the crunch of bone. It was all so sudden she hadn’t even time to cry out but slumped onto the stairs with nothing more than a dull groan. I examined the back of her skull and was pleased to see the sock had not only kept it from getting ash-stained but had stopped any cutting, which wouldn’t have fitted my story. Instead of a gash there was nothing more than a large depression where the cranium had caved in.

I put a finger to her throat and felt for a pulse. How I would have preferred to squeeze that throat and watch her eyes goggle in amazement while I pressed the life out of her, but alas it would not have answered to my purpose.

I turned her around so she was lying on her back facing the upper flight of stairs as though she had fallen – or been pushed – backwards down them. I collected a couple of things that had been dashed from the tray when she dropped it, a piece of bread and the tin mug. I put them on the uppermost two steps, then placed the tray itself on the landing at the top, right outside the madwoman’s door, as though O’Reilly had dropped it there. It was vital it should appear that she had been at the top when she fell.

Just then, as I began to calm down, I became aware of a noise behind me and realised it was the madwoman shrieking on the other side of her door, no doubt agitated by the noise. I ignored her and stood on the top landing and surveyed the tableau I had created until I had satisfied myself that everything appeared correct. Returning to O’Reilly, I raked my fingernails down one of her cheeks, enough to cause a vicious-looking graze.

I took her bunch of keys from the loop on her belt and tried them in the door in front of me until I found one that fitted the lock, although I didn’t turn it fully but left it so the door remained locked with the key in it and the rest of the bunch dangling there. Then I put my poker under my jacket again and hurried downstairs.

The dining hall was empty and I slipped through it unseen into the front corridor. In the distance I could hear the sound of singing. I reached the main stairs without encountering anyone and took them at a gallop. I went into my room, removed the socks from the end of the poker, put them back in their drawer and restored the murder weapon to its normal place.