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Jess Kidd

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Mr. Flood's Last Resort: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Jess Kidd (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 875 ratings

Editors' pick Best Literature & Fiction

See all formats and editions

“[A] murder mystery about an Irish caregiver and her client, a cantankerous, widowed hoarder . . . [a] darkly comic sensibility [and] plenty of twists.” —Publishers Weekly

Finalist, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award

Maud Drennan is a dedicated caregiver whose sunny disposition masks a deep sadness. A tragic childhood event left her haunted, in the company of a cast of prattling saints who pop in and out of her life like tourists. Other than visiting her agoraphobic neighbor, Maud keeps to herself, finding solace in her work and in her humble existence—until she meets Mr. Flood.

Cathal Flood is a menace by all accounts. The lone occupant of a Gothic mansion crawling with feral cats, he has been waging war against his son’s attempts to put him into an old-age home and sent his last caretaker running for the madhouse. But Maud is this impossible man’s last chance: If she can help him get the house in order, he just might be able to stay. So the unlikely pair begins to cooperate, bonding over their shared love of Irish folktales and mutual dislike of Mr. Flood’s overbearing son.

Examining the space between sin and sainthood, Mr. Flood’s Last Resort “perfectly balances tragedy with dark comedy. . . . the dialogue crackles and every detail enchants” (Shelf Awareness).

“Will appeal to fans of Tana French and Sophie Hannah, as it charms and unsettles in equal measure.” —BookPage

“The author of Himself has prepared a fine Irish feast for the literary crowd; she simultaneously delights and appalls with her odd and troubled characters, never resorting to formula.” —Library Journal

“[A] charming mix of magic and mystery . . . wrapped around a tale of family love and dysfunction . . . The action-packed climax leaves us with the whiff of a sequel. We can only hope it will come soon.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Published in the UK under the title The Hoarder

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Mr. Flood's Last Resort

"Jess Kidd delivers another charming mix of magic and mystery, this time wrapped around a tale of family love and dysfunction...The action-packed climax leaves us with the whiff of a sequel. We can only hope it will come soon."—Minneapolis Star Tribune

"The gothic plot of this murder mystery (following Himself) about an Irish caregiver and her client, a cantankerous, widowed hoarder, boasts Kidd’s darkly comic sensibility, atmospheric writing, and colorful characters...there are plenty of twists and perilous turns to keep the narrative moving. Kidd’s novel features a winning combination of descriptive writing, black humor, and biting dialogue." —Publishers Weekly

"Irish magical realism saturates this double mystery with saints, mistaken identities, and a hoarder’s creepy house… The author of Himself has prepared a fine Irish feast for the literary crowd; she simultaneously delights and appalls with her odd and troubled characters, never resorting to formula."—Library Journal

"[This] compelling second novel weaves love, betrayal, and forgiveness with humor, mystery, and a bit of magic...[an]absorbing mix of paranormal tragedy and heartfelt triumph will appeal to a broad swath of readers.” —Booklist

"It won’t be like any other novel you’ve read this year—or maybe ever—but it’s worth it."—Kirkus

"Jess Kidd’s mysteries refuse to conform to genre in the most delicious of ways. She sculpts her imaginative storylines with a deft hand managing to bring otherworldly elements into the intriguing mystery at the center of her plot."
—Electric Literature

“A magically entertaining read…Jess Kidd has a gift for creating characters you’ll love with a few cleverly chosen words.” —Good Housekeeping (UK), Book of the Month

“A rare delight.” —Cosmopolitan (UK)

"An enchanting thriller that disarms and delights...will appeal to fans of Tana French and Sophie Hannah, as it charms and unsettles in equal measure."—BookPage

About the Author

Jess Kidd is the award-winning author of The Night Ship, Himself, Mr. Flood’s Last Resort, and Things in Jars. Learn more at JessKidd.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1

He has a curious way of moving through his rubbish. He leans into it, skimming down the corridors like a fearless biker on a hairpin bend. He gallops and vaults through the valleys and hills, canters and bobs through the outcrops and gorges of his improbable hoardings. Now and then he stops to climb over an obstacle, folding his long legs like picnic chairs. And all the while his chin juts up and out, and his body hangs beneath it, as if his grizzled jaw is wired to an invisible puppeteer. And all the while the backs of his big gnarly hands brush over the surfaces. For a tall man and an old man he can shift himself when he wants to.

I don’t move like that. I wade, tripping over boxes and piles of mildewing curtains, getting caught in cables, hooked on hat stands, and assaulted by rutting ironing boards. I flounder over records, books, stained blankets, greasy collections of plastic bags, garden forks, antique mangles, a woman’s patent leather shoe, and an unopened blender that also grates and peels. And cats, cats, cats.

Cats of all kinds: ginger, black, brindled, tabby, and piebald. Cats sleeping, eyeing, scratching, and licking their arses on sour cushions, humping under upturned boxes, and crapping on great drifts of newspaper.

I try not to look at the details but some little thing always catches my eye. A dead mouse curled in a teacup, a headless ceramic dray horse, a mannequin’s pink severed limb: that sort of thing. I have a morbid bent.

THIS MORNING I am excavating the northwest corner of the kitchen. Taking as modern topsoil a pile of local papers dated September 2015, I have traced back through layers and layers of history. On reaching a sprinkling of betting slips stuck to the linoleum (dated March 1990), I was able to estimate that this filth hole has not been cleaned for at least twenty-five years. Having opened several speculative trenches and located an oven, I am now enthusiastically cleaning its hob.

I count (sing with me):

Seven withered woodlice
Six shriveled spiders
Five black bags
Four kitchen rolls
Three dishcloths
Two scouring pads
And industrial-grade thick bleach.

I AM wearing a disposable apron, extra-safe rubber gloves, and a face mask for the smell and for the spores.

He’s staring at me from the kitchen door, Mr. Cathal Flood, three feet taller than usual because he is standing on a mound of discarded carpet tiles. This makes him a giant because he is already a fair height: a long, thin, raw-boned, polluted old giant. The set of eyes he has trained on me are deep-socketed and unnervingly pale: the pale, pale, boreal blue of an Arctic hound.

“You had no business throwing out the cartons and so forth.” He talks slowly and over-loudly, as if he’s testing his voice. “All my things gone and I had a need for them.”

I turn to him, breathing like Darth Vader through my mask, and shrug. I hope my shrug communicates a profound respect for his discarded possessions (twenty refuse sacks of empty sardine tins) combined with the regretful need for practical living.

He narrows his gimlet eyes. “You’re a little shit, aren’t you?”

I pull off my mask. “I wanted to find your cooker, Mr. Flood. I thought we might branch out, give the microwave a bit of a break.”

He watches me, his mouth tight with venom. “I could curse you,” he says, a hint of a sob in his frayed brogue. “I could curse you to hell.”

Be my fecking guest, I say to my Brillo pad.

I draw hearts on the rotten hob with bleach and then start scrubbing again. Mr. Flood mutters in broken Irish on the other side of the kitchen.

“That’s lovely,” I murmur. “You have a poet’s voice, Mr. Flood. Loaded with foreboding and misery.”

I flick the dishcloth blithely into the corners of the grill as Mr. Flood switches to English. He wishes me a barren womb (no changes there, then), eating without ever shitting, sodomy by all of hell’s demons (simultaneously and one after another), fierce constrictions of the throat, a relentless smoldering of the groin, and an eternity in hell with my eyes on fire.

Then he stops and I look up. He is pushing his hand through the spun floss of his hair (white halo, cobweb magnet, subject to static), patting it down, as if making himself presentable. Then he raises the still-dark caterpillars of his eyebrows a fraction of an inch and dips his head to one side. The effect is oddly charming; it has something of an ancient misanthropic squirrel about it. His mouth starts to work, in a series of stifled contortions, like a ventriloquist with hiccups.

“Are you okay, Mr. Flood?”

He takes a deep breath and bares his tarnished dentures at me. I realize that he’s smiling.

I venture a tentative smile of my own.

“Don’t you ever lose your temper?” he asks.

I study his face for signs of attack. “No, Mr. Flood, I have a sunny disposition.”

“Isn’t that a grand thing for the both of us, Drennan?” he says, and with a quick pat of the wall he climbs down from the carpet tiles and swims back through the hallway.

I stare at the damp patch on the seat of his trousers.

I HAVE worked at Mr. Flood’s house for just over a week and he’s finally said my name.

I consider this a relative success.

Sam Hebden, a geriatric whisperer brought in at great expense from a better agency than ours, lasted three days before Mr. Flood ran him off the property with a hurling stick. I haven’t had the pleasure, but I gather Sam was in tatters.

Perhaps Biba Morel, Case Manager, was right after all in pairing us: Cathal Flood, meet Maud Drennan. Biba’s cake-saturated voice was full of glee when she phoned me that day. I could picture her, squeezed behind the desk, sucking on a cream éclair. Her jowls wobbling with delight as she riffled through her agency files, performing that alchemic magic she was renowned for: matching geriatric hell-raisers with minimum-waged staff. Biba the social-care cupid, dressed in a stretch-waisted suit and floral scarf. Her voice honeyed with the joy of facilitating yet another spectacular client–care worker relationship.

I hardly listened, but if I had, I would have heard the words: attracts a higher pay rate, challenging, assault, hoarding, and common ground. I would certainly have agreed that Mr. Flood and myself, both being Irish, share a love of fiddle music, warm firesides, and a staunch belief in the malevolence of fairies. Not to mention the innate racial capacity to drink any man alive under the table whilst we dwell, in soft melancholy, on the lost wild beauty of our homeland.

But now, as I survey the scene before me, my optimism falters.

Even the cloakroom in Mr. Flood’s straight-up, falling-down, Gothic crap heap is on a grand scale. Part-ballroom, part-cave, with a great black marble horse trough of a sink and wall sconces three feet high topped with whipped glass flames. An antiquated tin cistern roosts high above a monumental throne—a masterpiece in scalloped ceramic. The color palette of this room is unremittingly unwholesome: the paintwork is lurid sphagnum and the tiles are veined the blue-black-green of an overripe cheese. The linoleum, where I’ve swept the floor, is patterned with brown lozenges like ancient orderly blood stains.

In one corner a limbless Barbie doll floats on an ocean of takeaway menus. Her smile is a picture of buoyant fortitude. I wonder if she is part of some sort of art installation, like the abstract expressionist shit that splatters the wall and the mug tree lodged in the toilet bowl.

Perhaps this is a job for another day. Perhaps this is a job for never.

A low-grade grumbling tells me that Mr. Flood is haunting the corridor outside. He has been watching me all afternoon, lurking behind stacked boxes and disemboweled televisions as I crinkle through his house in my disposable plastic apron.

I’m certain he’s working up to something.

Out of the corner of my eye I see him dragging a filing cabinet to the mouth of the door. He arranges himself on top of it, ruffling his many layers of clothing and folding his rangy limbs like an ancient disdainful crane.

Then: “I’ve been thinking, Drennan.”

“Good for you, Mr. Flood.”

Then: nothing.

I glance across at him, waiting. He is staring down at the hands resting on his knees, so I consider them too. Palms big enough to span a melon, fingers slim and dextrous-looking: a pianist’s or a surgeon’s fingers. A smear of paint on the knuckle of his wrist, and long, curved nails, as strong as horn. He wears several checked shirts, each with overstuffed patch pockets, which give him the appearance of having multiple lopsided breasts. A woolen scarf is wound haphazardly about his head. On his feet he wears a pair of winkle-pickers laced with string. The toes alone are a meter long. They curl at the end with all the coiled threat of a scorpion’s tail.

I put on my safety goggles and turn back to the toilet, hastily extracting the mug tree from the bowl. I triple-bag it without breathing, tie the handles, and get ready to start my bleach offensive.

“Maud Drennan.” He says my name slowly, as if tasting it, savoring it. “There you are with your head down the toilet. Will you come out and let me talk to you?”

Now here’s a departure: it wants to talk.

I pull the chain on the old-fashioned cistern. The thing flushes with a rush of rust-colored water.

“What do you want to talk about, Mr. Flood?”

“The house: how are you finding it?”

I glance up at him. He has an expression of twisted playfulness, as if he’s pulled half the legs off a spider and is now going to watch it reel round in circles.

“The house is grand.”

He narrows his eyes. “You’re rattled by it and by me. I can tell by your pinched little face.”

“My face is in no way rattled or pinched, Mr. Flood.”

“I make you nervous.” His voice softens. “Don’t lie to me now, Drennan. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I growl into the toilet bowl.

He sits in silence for a while, then, softer still: “You have a beautiful set of eyes. The brown of a newly split conker.”

I squeeze bleach under the rim.

“Or a polished walnut table.”

I start to scrub.

“An amber glow to them in the light, like fine Cognac.”

I scrub harder.

“Had a little sister with eyes just like yours,” he says. “Could bore through the chest of a fella at ten paces and grab him by the heart at five. Eyes a man could drown in. Like hot treacle.”

I straighten up and throw him a withering look. He looks back at me gravely, sucking solemnly on his dentures, without even a hint of a smirk.

“Of course, it was miraculous that she had a pair of eyes at all,” he says. “Considering…”

“Considering what?”

He takes cigarette papers and a pouch of tobacco out of his breast pocket and puts them on his knees. He regards me slyly. “Do you want to know why my sister’s eyes were miraculous?”

I give a half shrug, which means not especially, and turn back to the cistern, giving the chain a pull for something to do. But it’s too early: the mechanism clanks and there’s nothing. I’ll have to wait.

Mr. Flood waits too. With calm, practiced movements he starts to roll a cigarette against his long thigh. His big hands are gentle, adept. I try not to watch him. He deftly licks the gummed strip on the paper, pinches the loose tobacco from the ends, and puts the cigarette between his lips.

“It all started with the wasps.” He lights his cigarette and takes a drag.

“The wasps?”

He exhales. “It’s quite a story; do you want to hear it?”

“Is it a long story?”

“Not at all.” He gives me a crafty smile, his blue eyes lit. “In my boyhood I was a great one for a dare.”

“Were you, now?”

“There was nothing I wouldn’t do if you bet me to do it. I’d bite into the belly of a dead frog, shit on the priest’s doorstep, or sleep the night on the grave of the terrifying Mrs. Gillespie.”

“You did all those things?” I give up on the cistern, shut the lid of the toilet, and sit down on it.

“I did. I was a holy terror.”

I laugh, despite myself.

He laughs too, delightedly. “Now, one day the town’s children bet me I wouldn’t climb up the tree in Mrs. Clancy’s yard and belt the hell out of her wasp’s nest. It was the biggest nest anyone had ever seen. For years it had grown unchecked, a great whorled bunion of a thing.”

Mr. Flood pauses for effect, taking another drag on his cigarette. “Mr. Clancy had been forever promising Mrs. Clancy that he’d deal with it. But it was well-known that he was terrified of wasps, having been stung on the end of his gooter whilst pissing in a hedgerow.” Mr. Flood opens his legs and points emphatically at the drooping crotch of his trousers.

“I know what a gooter is, Mr. Flood.”

As if laughing, the cistern gives a sick gurgle.

He grins. “So you do. One day, word began to go around that Cathal Flood was going head-to-head with Clancy’s wasps. There was nothing for it but to take a length of rope and a sturdy belting stick and set out for Clancy’s.”

For a long moment he sits smiling at his knees. “Every child in the neighborhood came to watch me climb that tree. Up I went, and soon enough I got a proper look at the nest.” He frowns. “There they were, these great long feckers. Flying in and out, crawling over each other with their arses fat with venom.”

Above me, a nervous dribble of water runs down through the pipes.

“But I held firm and gave the nest a bit of a poke with my stick. All the children below roared and hopped as the wasps woke up and began to spill out of the nest.”

He eyes me belligerently. “My next move was fearless. I stood up on the bough of the tree and gave the nest a good clout. It peeled from the trunk like a rotten blister and fell down to the ground amongst the children, who scattered to the four corners of the yard. We all stared at the nest in surprise.” Mr. Flood hesitates, looking at me expectantly, waiting for the question.

“Why? What did you see?” I ask.

Mr. Flood leans forwards, his eyes wide. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s just it,” he says. “Nothing happened. The nest lay there motionless. Dented but intact. And quiet. Not a peep from it. So the children drew nearer. And nothing happened. So the children drew nearer. And still nothing happened.”

“The wasps were dead?”

A smile plays on his lips. “I jumped down out of the tree and everyone gathered around me and we began to debate whether I ought to stamp on the nest or set it on fire. And that’s when Ruth heard it.”

“Heard what?”

He looks like he’s enjoying this. He has the voice for it: blarney-coated. “As we debated, my baby sister had toddled up to the nest and crouched on the ground. She dipped her head to it and listened. Do you know what she heard?”

I nod slowly.

“A low angry drone. The sound of a thousand wasps protesting,” he says. “Ruth, in her innocence, picked up the nest. She cradled it in her arms and began to sing it a lullaby.”

He relights his roll-up, tapping ash into a nearby broken soup tureen. “Of course, I’d noticed none of this for by now a fight had broken out. I was refusing to have anything further to do with the nest but the children had come to see a daring spectacle. I was just about to agree to eat a dead wasp, minus the sting, for I was not a total fecking eejit, when one of the children pulled on my sleeve and pointed across the yard in horror.”

I’m on the edge of the toilet seat; the cistern too is riveted: it is holding its drips. “What was it?”

Mr. Flood frowns. “Ruth. Sitting on the ground, no bigger than a milk pail. Her face a mask of furious insects.”

I shake my head.

He leans forwards, his voice clotted with disgust. “They were swarming all over her. No sound came from her mouth, which was opened as if in a scream, only wasps crawling in and out of it.”

“Bloody hell,” I whisper.

“The wasps began to spread, coating her a hundred deep, writhing, teeming. Soon all that was left uncovered was one tiny outstretched finger.” He mimics Ruth’s pose with his horn-nailed old digit.

And it strikes me how utterly convincing he is, his pale eyes filled with emotion and a distressed look about his jowls.

“Then, God help me, I acted, Drennan. I took up my stick and began to beat the feckers off her. The others watched, horrified, behind walls and ditches. But I stood my ground, holding my arm over my face, belting the wasps until Ruth fell over and Mrs. Clancy came screaming out into the yard.”

He passes his hand over his forehead, frowning deeply. “Mr. Clancy tried to pull me away and Mrs. Clancy tried to cover Ruth with a blanket, but I swung my stick again and again.”

I realize that I’m gripping the toilet brush. I put it down.

He regards me with a grave expression. “And then, and I swear this to God, all at once the creatures lifted up in one great maddened cloud and droned off across the field. I threw down my stick, slung Ruth over my shoulder, and, without thinking, carried her up to the holy well.”

“The holy well?”

“A horse trough on the road out of town, but it was said to have powers.” He glances at me. “God bless Ireland in the olden days; if water collected in a teacup it was said to have curative powers. Ours was a great well for curing scrofula.”

“Scrofula?”

“Five miles down the coast, there was a pond that relieved pharyngitis. I ran up the road, threw the baby into the water, and held her under.” He frowns. “If she still had eyes in her head I couldn’t see them. Her face was pulp, a mess of poison. Her little arm floated up and out of the water as if she was waving to me, although I was sure she had gone.”

He looks at the cigarette end forgotten in his fingers. He finds his lighter. “But the saints were listening that day and the water in that trough was truly holy. For as I raised her up out of the water Ruth took a deep breath and began to wail. And I saw there wasn’t a mark on the child. Not a sting. Not a bruise. I pulled her outfit off and turned her around and around. There she was, shivering and turning before my eyes, a perfect little unmarked girl.”

“St. Gobnait,” I mutter.

St. Gobnait with her pale hair and calm face, lovely in her golden robe and diadem. Smiling down at the friendly bee that has alighted on her finger. I glance around, half expecting to see her leaning against the sink, but she isn’t of course. No reasonable saint would come into this house.

Mr. Flood frowns. “What?”

“The listening saint would have been St. Gobnait. Although, she’s bees really, but she’d have been a great one to help with the stings.”

He looks puzzled. I’ve dropped a pebble in his story; it has made ripples and clouded the picture.

“So Ruth survived?” I ask.

He nods. “But things were never the same with her. She had changed. She began to talk to herself.” He gives me a twisted half smile. “She said she was speaking to the dead.”

“The dead?”

The cistern gives a resonant burble.

Mr. Flood looks up at it distractedly. “Mammy took her before the priest and Daddy offered to knock the corners off her but still Ruth twittered on. Until I sat her down and told her that if she wanted to survive her childhood she must keep her abilities to herself.”

“And did she?”

“She did. From that day, whenever the urge was upon her, Ruth crept outside and whispered to the fence post. So it all ended well in a way.”

“In a way,” I say flatly.

“But the biggest change was in her eyes and Ruth couldn’t hide that.” He smiles at me. “They were lit with a kind of sorrowful gleam, a kind of tragic luster, like pearls, you know.”

Something moves deep in the heart of me, as lithe and unwholesome as an old snake turning over in the sand. My breath snags; my nerves catch.

I keep my voice light. “Not conkers?”

A faraway look settles on Mr. Flood’s face. “Do you know how pearls are made? A tiny bit of grit works its way inside the shell, into the softest place.” He twists his fingertips into his cupped hand. “The oyster coats this irritant to make it smooth, to make it bearable.”

I can’t answer.

“A pearl is an everlasting tear,” he whispers. “A swaddled hurt.”

I stare at him.

“Likewise, the loveliest eyes are found in the heads of women who have suffered.” He smiles. “Damage lies at their shining core. As I said, Drennan, you have beautiful eyes.”

The cistern gives a tense gurgle and I remind myself that this old man has no idea what damage lies at my shining core. Away with his reveries, prodding at his palm, murmuring nonsense; he hasn’t a clue what he’s saying.

“Stick to the story, Mr. Flood,” I say.

He narrows his eyes. “But you’ve a better one…?”

“If I had I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Fair play.” He smiles. “So because of me, Ruth went to the brink of death, was saved, learnt to keep her cracked ways to herself, and became better-looking.”

“And because of you the nest came down and the wasps nearly killed her in the first place.”

“Shit happens. Mind, Ruth did predict that I’d marry Mary.”

The cistern comes alive with the happy gushing of water. I glance up at it.

“Your wife?”

He nods. “Although my sister didn’t need second sight to work that out.”

“Why not?”

Mr. Flood hesitates. “Mary had this fiery hair like the sun setting on autumn. Born to a farmer but built for the drawing room. You’d never imagine she wasn’t a lady, a queen, Helen of Troy, any day.”

“You must have loved her very much.”

His body stiffens. “Must I?”

“You must miss her.”

Brows lower over a blue glare. “Must I?”

“You’ve been on your own for a while now, haven’t you?”

“Have you even read the fucking care plan?” He affects a singsong snarl. “Mr. Cathal Flood, retired artist, mechanical engineer, and dealer in curiosities, lives alone in his substantial Victorian Grade II listed villa.”

“But you have a son. He must be some comfort to you?”

“What do you know about my son?”

“What I read in the care plan.”

He pauses, his face a picture of disgust. “Spill.”

“Dr. Gabriel Flood is a Drama and Theatre Arts lecturer and an active member of West Ealing Choral Society.”

“Dr. Gabriel Flood is a gobshite.”

I frown. “Who wishes very strongly for his father to continue to reside at Bridlemere, with the best possible care, pending Mr. Flood’s admission to a suitable residential home.”

Mr. Flood smiles sourly. “Which will prove a challenging placement because the old bastard has threatened trouble on a biblical scale—dirty protest, arson, and ruin—if he is moved to a residential home.”

“It doesn’t say that in the care plan. So you’re not planning on moving to a residential home, Mr. Flood?”

“Not while there’s a hole in my arse,” he says.

He throws me a look of loathing as he unfurls his limbs in a series of spasms. Hauling himself to his feet, restacking bone and joint. Setting his great head wobbling at the top, all hinged jaw and glowering brows.

He’s halfway down the corridor when I say it.

“I’m sure your son only wants the best for you, Mr. Flood.”

With remarkable speed, in one blurred bound he’s back in through the door and across the floor.

Bolt upright his height is stunning.

He is a gigantic longbow: body held taught, every sinew trembling with tension. He points down at me, the arrow of his index finger aimed between my eyes.

“Fucker,” he hisses.

He backs out of the room, still pointing, drops his arm, and casts off down the hallway. Piles of rubbish slump and tumble in his wake.

I WONDER if I should make a run for it. I sit down on the toilet while I think about this, my legs not being quite trustworthy yet. Above me water races through the pipes, a sudden deluge into the cistern, as if it has been waiting with its breath held.

Then this happens, in this order: the cloakroom door slams shut, a low moan sounds deep in the cistern, a toilet roll unspools itself across the floor.

I glance over at limbless Barbie. She looks alarmed, despite the winning smile.

I cross the room at a half run, try the door handle, and find it locked.

The wall lights flare with a sudden tungsten glow. Burning bright, then dipping low.

I wait, still holding the handle with my heart flapping, counting down and then up again in little panicky scales of numbers.

On high, the top of the old tin cistern begins to hop like the lid of a pan on the boil, dribbles of water bubbling over. This is followed by a concentrated hiss like the pressurized song of a coal-fired train. Streams of water spurt from the joints of the pipework in a series of gushes. I press myself against the door. Airborne arcs of water whip and fall from the cistern. Dashing and collapsing, twisting and falling, like dropped skipping ropes.

The water in the toilet bowl starts to rock.

The handbasin taps join in, opening with a metallic grind, vomiting water. In moments the sink is full, overspill pouring onto the floor.

I watch as a milk bottle, of all things, bobs up from the depths of the handbasin. The milk bottle treads water in a slow revolve, as if, fully aware of its inexplicable entry into the scene, it is waiting for the audience to catch up. Then it launches, decisively, over the side of the basin in a cascade of water to skim across the wet linoleum and knock gently against the side of my trainer.

The torrent halts as suddenly as it started. The last jet from the cistern arrested in mid-air falls, scattering droplets on the linoleum. The handbasin drains.

The room is silent but for the odd coy drip and contrite burble and sheepish plash. As if the plumbing is embarrassed about its outburst.

Behind me the cloakroom door opens.

THE MILK bottle is old-fashioned, shoddily stoppered with a taped-on foil top. It is empty but for a photograph. I dry my hands and the bottle and poke the picture out.

Two children stand, hand in hand, beside an ornate fountain. The stone nymph at the center of the fountain watches them with languorous curiosity whilst pretending to listen to her conch shell. The water in her pond looks solid, dark. Icicles hang from the tiered rims. The branches on the bushes in the background are frostbitten and bare.

The boy scowls up at the camera. No more than four, his face translucently pale and his hair a vivid auburn.

The girl is taller, no less than seven, and has no face. Instead there is a burn that goes right through the photograph. Edges melted, a raised welt, as if from a cigarette.

An army of spiders march across my scalp. I feel cursed even to be holding this. Drop it, I say to myself.

But I don’t. I look at the frizz of hair that surrounds the space where her face should be: russet hair, unnaturally bright, backlit by the setting winter sun. I look at the girl’s patent shoes and her legs in red patterned tights and her navy coat. The toes of her feet meet. Pigeon-toed.

I turn the photograph over. The first word is scored out, a series of deeply etched kisses. The caption reads:

Xxxxxxxxxx and Gabriel, Bridlemere, 1977.

An artifact has washed up, knocking, on my shore.

But why my shore?

My shore is strange, inhospitable terrain. It is rock-ringed and uninviting and ruled by odd, unfathomable tides.

Another person, in another time, put their faith in the unknown—in the unseen me. They rolled and stoppered and hoped their message would get through. Someone transmitted: I received.

Would it be churlish to throw it back amongst the flotsam and jetsam and let someone else find it?

Would I dare? In all the mad swill of objects, the house gave me this.

The photograph lies on my palm, turning up at the ends like a fortune-telling fish. It’s telling a bad kind of fortune, of that I’ve no doubt.

I glance around me. At the sodden rubbish, the soaked walls; at limbless Barbie watching me from the corner with one eyebrow raised. Her fuchsia lips mouth one word. Run.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B078MDTBKG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books; Reprint edition (May 1, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 1, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 9760 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 351 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #362,174 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #469 in British & Irish Literary Fiction
- #490 in Humorous Literary Fiction
- #904 in Dark Humor

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Jess Kidd

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Jess was brought up in London as part of a large family from County Mayo. After returning to college as a mature learner on a bursary Jess lectured and taught creative writing to all age groups. Her debut novel, Himself, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2016, Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2017 and longlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2017. Her second novel, The Hoarder, was shortlisted for Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2019. Both books were selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club. Jess's third novel, Things in Jars, was published to critical acclaim. Her fourth book, an epic shipwreck saga called The Night Ship, is out this year. Jess won the Costa Short Story Award in 2016 with 'Dirty Little Fishes' and has recently contributed short fiction to The Haunting Season, a collection of ghostly winter tales. Jess's first book for children Everyday Magic is a teacher's pick.

Jess has lately been developing original TV and film projects alongside short fiction and her fifth novel. To find out more about Jess and her work visit jess.kidd.com or Twitter @JessKiddHerself.

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Kimber

If you enjoy magical realism done well, this will be your cup of tea.

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2024

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"He has a curious way of moving through his rubbish. He leans into it, skimming down the corridors like a fearless biker on a hairpin bend."

The ‘he’ in the above quote would be Cathal Flood. His name fits, as he is a cantankerous Irish disaster and hoarding is his specialty. At six feet nine inches, Mr. Flood, though frail with age, is still a force to be reckoned with. He has run off every home carer sent his way, and rumor has it that some had barely escaped Bridlemere (the neglected mansion Flood calls home) with their lives.

Enter Maud Dennen, who is not your average carer. She brings with her a retinue of saints and has a backbone made of steel. Good luck to Cathal Flood in dispatching her so easily…

"I look back at Bridlemere from the gate. From the street it’s a wall of dark green, a forest of leylandii grown up around Sleeping Beauty’s castle."

As Maud peels back chaotic layers of rubbish and navigates Cathal’s clowder of cats, she uncovers more than his no-wax flooring. Curious clues begin to pop out of a sink and fly at her from a pantry, and she begins to ask herself: What sinister forces are at work in this house?

"A pearl is an everlasting tear," he whispers. "A swaddled hurt."

Mr. Flood’s Last Resort is altogether a murder mystery, a haunting, and a fight to save what is left of a person once tragedy has taken its toll - all of it wrapped up in a magical realism enchilada. I laughed, cried, and gasped aloud as Maud and Cathal cagily maneuvered around each other while sorting out his mysterious manor. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with them both.

If you enjoy magical realism done well, this will be your cup of tea. What a fabulous read!

One person found this helpful

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Serena

A Hoot!

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2022

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This book features Catholic Saints, murder mysteries, a haunted and hoarded mansion in London, a crazy and decrepit master of the mansion, and just plain weirdness.

Enjoyable and readable and not particularly funny while being read. However, a week or so after I finished I started thinking of the book as amusing. I smile whenever I see the book.

Is there going to be another one? I hope so!

One person found this helpful

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Hailey Winkleman

Lots of Threads that Go Nowhere

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2020

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Lots of interesting concepts are picked up and dropped, or simply have unsatisfying resolutions. There are also “reveals” that are so simple to figure out. I was at first impressed that I was wrong about one mystery, then 100 pages later the main character figured it out...well, I was right after all, and a lot of time was wasted. The writing can be very gorgeous and engaging, but the plot is lacking and often goes for the YA version of “lolrandom,” which is “oohweird.”

5 people found this helpful

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lisaleo (Lisa Yount)

complex characters, beautiful writing, good mysteries

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2019

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This book is delightful in so many ways!

First, it features three complex, appealing characters:
Cathal Flood, an elderly, eccentric hoarder living in a huge old house with endless rubbish, a bizarre taxidermy collection, and, yes, a herd of semi-feral cats. Frail but very tall, with powerful hands, he is full of Irish charm one minute and terrifying the next.
Maud Drennan, his caregiver (assigned by a social services agency) and the narrator. She’s just as eccentric as Flood; like Joan of Arc, she talks to several ghostly saints on a regular basis, though her saints have very different personalities and agendas from Joan’s. She’s also both nosy and persistent, braving Flood’s wall of National Geographics repeatedly to learn his secrets and those of his mysteriously dead wife, Mary.
Renata, Maud’s landlady. Born male, she has dressed and lived as a woman for most of her adult life (without surgery, however) and enjoys playing Drag Queen to the hilt. She is very fond of Maud and is even more curious about the mysteries of the Flood household than Maud is.

Second, the writing is drop-dead gorgeous. This was the start of the first paragraph, Maud describing Flood: “He has a curious way of moving through his rubbish. He leans into it, skimming down the corridors like a fearless biker on a hairpin bend. He gallops and vaults through the valleys and hills, canters and bobs through the outcrops and gorges of his improbable hoardings. Now and then he stops to climb over an obstacle, folding his long legs like picnic chairs.” Reading that, I knew immediately that I was in for a treat.

Third, there are several interlocking mysteries:
Was Mary’s fatal fall down the stairs really accidental, or was she pushed?
What is Flood’s irritating son, Gabriel, up to?
Did Flood have a daughter as well as a son, and if so, what happened to her?
What happened to missing schoolgirl Maggie Dunne, and did Flood play any part in it?
What happened to Maud’s own older sister, Dierdre, who also went missing as a teenager while Maud was still a child?
All these and more are interesting and are satisfyingly resolved.by the end of the book.

Plus there are ghosts (maybe), the wonderful old house and its contents, a tame fox, and much more… It all adds up to one of the best books I’ve read in ages.

26 people found this helpful

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Smyrna Retiree

Convoluted Plot, Page Turner

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2019

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Initially I was reading the book in the middle of the night to deal with my insomnia but it soon became too exciting for that. The plot has lots of unexpected twists and turns. I'm actually reading it again to see if I can figure it out. I loved the little extra paranormal "spice". That made it even more challenging to figure out what was possible in that universe. The characters are delightful, especially Maud, Renata, and Mr Flood. Maud is so courageous!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

CraftyM

Jess Kidd is my new favourite author

Reviewed in Canada on January 29, 2019

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I am enjoying this book very much 2nd book by the same author and so far hasn’t disappointed

Carolyn

I was entranced by the author’s rich imagination and wonderful way with words

Reviewed in Canada on July 4, 2018

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I was entranced by the author’s rich imagination and wonderful way with words. This is a magical, mystical gothic mystery with elements of the supernatural. There is some vulgar, ribald language particularly from the irascible Mr. Flood. I am usually put off by crude language and swearing in a book but his expletives made me laugh out loud. There are ghosts, saints who wander through scenes, a possible love story, and themes of loneliness, family tragedy, forgiveness, secrets, lies and deceit.

The story times funny, sad and poignant. The characters are compelling. It Iincludes Irish folklore and religious beliefs. Mr. Flood lives in a Gothic Mansion filled with rubbish, mementos from the past, valuable collectibles and bizarre curiosities, numerous cats and a wall of National Geographics.. His son has threatened to move him to a home for the elderly and infirm if the home and yard is not cleared of the hoard. As a fan of the TV shows Hoarders and Hoarders Buried Alive I have seen a couple shows where wealthy hoarders lived in similar mansions with mountains of trash and valuables. Many of the hoarders were cranky but not nearly as entertaining as Mr. Flood.

Maud has been sent by an employment agency to clear up the hoard. There are rumours about how frightening working as a caregiver for Mr. Flood can be. In fact it is said that his last caregiver, Sam Hebdon was chased out of the home by Mr. Flood and his experiences there resulted in his stay in a mental institution. Maud is more steadfast and determined to help Mr.Flood. She once experienced a family tragedy and is no accompanied by visions of saints who often voice approval or disapproval of her actions. She meets Flood’s son Gabriel and Sam Hebdon. There is grief, loss and family secrets in the home and much tragedy, including the death of Flood’s wife, a missing daughter and his hatred and denial of son, Gabriel. Not everyone is reliable and there is much deception in word and deed.

Maud has an agoraphobic,transgendered friend, Renata,who loves a mystery. She convinces the reluctant Maud that perhaps Flood’s wife, the missing daughter and another girl who vanished after visiting the mansion were victims of criminal acts. She is urged to investigate. Sam, who has also listened to Renata’s wild theories seems unconvinced. He warns Maud to be careful and he wants to protect her.

Maud, after been initially sworn at and threatened by Mr Flood forms a bond with him and a friendship while he paints her portrait and tells folktales. She comes to care for the old man but is beset by danger, angry poltergeists and mountains of junk which means finding anything (to confirm Renata’s suspicions) in the decaying mansion next to impossible.

I thought most of the book was a 5 star read for me. The mystery plot was well constructed and compelling, but I felt was slowed down by the inclusion of Maud’s dreams and backstory. With all the wandering saints, I felt the addition of her dreams to be distraction and that Maud’s backstory would work better in a separate book. The descriptive passages were lovely and I now want to read the previous book Him. The ending was quite sad but left room for hope. An entertaining example of magic realism. 3.5 stars

One person found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Jess Kidd fan!

Reviewed in Canada on July 5, 2018

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This is the same book as “The Hoarder”. I am a fan of Jess Kidd’s storytelling, so inadvertently bought both books, however will gladly gift one of them to a friend. A story with heart and humour...a great distraction from the woes of the world!