It was close to three when people started to filter out of the Marisco Tavern. Eryn was weary, and Joan showed her upstairs to a room where Boen had already been dumped spread-eagle on the bed.
‘Charming,’ Eryn sighed, shaking her head. A candle had been placed on a stool made from the trunk of a tree, and shadows danced about the sparse, musty room.
It wasn’t long before the sounds of snoring filtered up from the rooms below. Eryn had learnt that several people from the island lived in the Marisco Tavern: Mickey Dean and his wife lived downstairs, Joan lived alone in a maisonette, and Red Sawbone lived upstairs with his two sons. The latter were away in Iceland, so Joan had given them the younger Sawbone’s room for the night.
Waiting for silence to overcome the house, Eryn opened the door nervously and slipped into the corridor. She didn’t know what to look for, and was downhearted that she only had access to three rooms on the whole island. It was better than nothing, she considered, and she would certainly achieve more than Boen’s slumberous contribution - even if she discovered nothing.
A small amount of light from the candle shone from the bedroom. There was just enough illumination to see the framework of the landing – a cupboard, two wood-framed pictures on the wall, a high shelf harbouring dusty Puffin skulls, and two doors.
Regretting she couldn’t take the candle for fear of being seen, she stepped towards the nearest room and lay her palm on the handle. It opened, its hinges grating softly as she pushed. Inside was crow-black, and she felt along the walls for any sign of cupboard, or book, some fitting piece of information that she knew full well she would not find.
A cough from below, hollow and blunt, arrested her and she waited for more to follow. Murmurs rose through the floorboards, whispered words, a woman’s voice followed by a man’s.
Silence followed, and after long minutes Eryn moved across the floor as quietly as she knew how.
Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark; she could make out the edges of a bed and a chest of drawers beside it. Gently she sat on the bed, and eased open the top drawer, it squeaked and she cringed. Again the woman below whispered, but there came no reply.
Eryn reached in and retrieved a sheaf of papers. They were papers that dated back several years, old papers full of sketches of birds and page after page of awful handwriting. In the darkness she could hardly make anything of it, apart from: Accounts for renewal… and: RE: Mr. Tanwen…
Looking through all the papers as best she could in the saturating darkness it became clear that Mr. Sawbone looked after Lundy’s financial affairs with an institution in Greenland. She knew that Mortehoe ran by the very same system, there was nothing suspicious there, the Camberwells held an account for the entire community, it was this account that Kelly had used to buy particulars on his runs to Ireland. She stacked the papers neatly, disappointed there was nothing incriminating amongst it, not that she had supposed there would be, it would have been an uncommon achievement in fortuity that the person they were searching for would reside in the room beside their own and have the civility to leave clues in the first drawer she opened. None the less, she was disheartened by the handful of scrawl and drawings.
She was about to return the papers when, in the act of leaning over to do so, her weight on the floorboard affected a sharp creak. The woman’s voice from the floor below exclaimed, ‘Mickey!’ in a manner that refused to be ignored.
Eryn froze, and more words were spoken, though again they were whispered. There came a grumble and the sound of padding footsteps. A door groaned open.
‘Oh shit!’ Eryn hissed, and lightly swept across the room, the papers still in her hand. From downstairs there came sighing, and Mickey Deans sonorous voice grumbled, ‘Bloody woman, can’t go a night without hearing ghosts!’
His footsteps were on the staircase. Eryn eased herself out of the room and pulled the door closed. It squeaked and the latch clicked, but Mickey was still grumbling; she didn’t think he’d heard a thing.
She made to return to her room and saw that the door had closed in her absence. She tiptoed across the landing, just as Mickey appeared at the top of the stairs. It was too late, there was no way she could open the door and get inside without him seeing the candle in the open doorway.
She turned to say something to him as he stepped to the hallway. ‘Don’t see her coming up here when I hear the timbers sighing! No, that’d be too much to ask for. Lazy, guzzlin’ sow…’ He walked passed Eryn and opened the door to Red Sawbone’s room. He peered inside and closed it again. He opened the door next to that and whispered ‘Hello?’ then sniffed and went back downstairs, complaining as he went.
Eryn closed her eyes and released her tight grip on the papers in her hand. She bit her lip and looked at Red Sawbone’s door. She didn’t dare put them back. All she could hope was that they wouldn’t be missed.