The Talking Board

by Issy Brooke

  Mrs Newman had told Marianne that Tobias would take to his room after dinner, around eight that evening, and not reappear until breakfast the next morning. Marianne waited in the room, and heard the footsteps of the boy going to bed. They were followed a little later by another set of much stealthier treads, and the little click of a key in a lock. He must have heard it. Marianne waited for a furious banging or shouting or some kind of protest, but nothing happened. She went to the corridor and peeked out, and saw Mrs Newman’s own door close at the far end. Both rooms were far away from where she had heard the noises. The house was not laid for water or gas, and did not have the snakes of pipes that many houses were now sprouting. It would be difficult to create a sound in those bedrooms and have it appear down at this end of the corridor.

  Difficult, but not impossible.

  She went back and picked a few things from the table. Tobias was locked in, but she wanted to safeguard Mrs Newman too. She took a few fine hairs that she had plucked from her own hairbrush earlier, and went out into the corridor with a small pot of rabbit skin glue and a horsehair paintbrush, stiff and solid.

  She painted the glue onto the doorframes and the doors, and sealed Tobias and Mrs Newman into their rooms. She then worked her way back along the corridor, repeating the procedure with every door.

  That done, she picked up a small box filled with cornflour. She had bought this when passing through town, now that all the food at Woodfurlong was being kept under lock and key. She’d heard of the practice of stringent economy and it was commonly recommended in household manuals, but it seemed like an awfully inefficient way to run a kitchen, and terribly insulting to the cook who had been in the family for decades. Also, it severely hampered her erratic approach to mealtimes now that she couldn’t just wander into the kitchens and find food at any time of the day or night.

  She laid the cornflour in long thin lines, arcing around the entrance to Dorothea’s room in the corridor, and also the other doors nearby. This had been the area where the screams had sounded the loudest. If a door opened, and the hairs broke, the cornflour should show her the direction that the perpetrator passed. In the gloom of the corridor, the lines were insubstantial and almost invisible. Only she knew that they were there.

  Then she moved her chair to the doorway so that she could settle and watch the corridor, particularly to the left in the direction of the door to Dorothea’s chamber.

  She waited.

  There were two lamps in the room behind her but their light didn’t extend very well to the corridor. Her eyes were adjusted to the darkness and she would be able to see shapes, and that was enough. She feared that if she lit it too much, she would scare away the person responsible.

  She wondered, then, why the source of the noise had continued in their silly play when she and Constable Bolton had been there. They must have been confident they would not be found out. Would they put in a repeat performance this night?

  She found out an hour later.

  It started like a nursery rhyme but quickly grew high and screeching. Marianne shot to her feet, her heart thumping. Nothing moved but the noise was coming from her left. She went towards it. She pressed her ear to the closed door of the Grand Bedroom, but the screaming did not sound any louder. She was sure now that it was coming from the opposite side of the corridor. She inched towards a door. It was wide, with dark wood panels, a real Tudor relic. Her cornflour had not been disturbed and the hair was unbroken.

  The noise was definitely coming from within. She cast her mind back to her previous visit. It was just a storeroom. There had been nothing interesting in there.

  It was, therefore, the ideal place to hide.

  If the malefactor had secreted themselves before she had set her traps, then this made perfect sense. There could be another person involved here, known or unknown to the other occupants. Annoyed, now, rather than scared, she flung the door open just as the noise died away.

  It was pitch black inside. She shot back to her room, grabbed a lamp, and returned. No one could have escaped out in the time that it took her to move, or she would surely have heard them, but she cursed herself anyway. She should have got the lamp before she opened the door.

  Nothing stirred. She strode into the room and hissed, “Who’s there? Come on. This is a silly joke that has gone too far.”

  She held the lamp high and examined every inch of the room. There were three round tables, and each one was piled with dusty objects – books, dolls, a box of toy soldiers, a hat with torn silk flowers. There was a large upturned glass that might have housed ferns at one point. A broken clock lay on the floor. Two chairs were tumbled onto their backs.

  But there was nowhere for anyone to hide.

  She went to the armoire, thinking that as it was against an adjoining wall, it might have a false back, allowing someone to sneak from room to room. It was full of old fur coats, and smelled dreadful, but the wooden back was solid and did not come loose to her prying fingers.

  Then she passed to the window. It was a simple style with one latch, unlocked, and it opened easily. She craned her head out but there was no balcony that could have afforded easy access from outside.

  She was baffled. And she hated it. She kicked at the floorboards, and looked up at the ceiling, and tapped the wooden walls, but they all sounded hollow to her with no differences from wall to wall.

  She put the lamp on a table and picked up the broken clock, shaking it, hoping that it might producing some kind of sound. Perhaps its chiming mechanism was still half-functional. Nothing happened. She shook out the toy soldiers all over the floor, but there was nothing hidden at the bottom of the box. She peeked under the doll’s skirts but there was only the expected bloomers and stiff china legs. It rattled as its head fell forward, its articulated neck now rusted and stiff. She put it down, unnerved by its unblinking gaze.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing. She snatched up the lamp and looked up at the ceiling again. Had that been a noise, a scratch or a slither, up above her in the empty attics?

  It was a tiny lead, but it was all she had to go on.

  As she went along the corridor, she checked the flour on the floor and hair over each door. No one had stirred. She crept up the stairs and stopped as she got to the top, before she rounded the sharp corner that led out to the passageway. Once, the household’s servants had lived up here, and possibly even the nursery or schoolroom had been here, in this wing or the other one.

  There was another noise that came from further down the corridor. It was a click, small and sharp and oddly final. She drew in her breath and wished, unexpectedly, that Constable Bolton was with her. He was useless, but he was at least a presence. She was nervous about being alone. Although, she was also nervous that she might be about to find out that she wasn’t on her own at all.

  She peeked around the corner, bringing the light of the lamp with her. Something shot along the floor towards her, brushing against her skirts, and skittered away. She would have screamed but her mouth was too dry, and her heart hammered so loudly she couldn’t hear anything else.

  A rat. It had been nothing but a rat. She forced herself to calm down. Goodness knows, she’d seen plenty of rats in her time. She lived in London, for heaven’s sake. She had a few more stern words with herself and then something occurred to her.

  What had startled the rat to make it run towards her?

  She had explored this corridor before, but she did so again, walking slowly and steadily down the centre of the uncarpeted passage, zigzagging from room to room, peeping into every space.

  Click.

  The noise came from below her foot and she froze in place, staring down at the wooden boards. Then she looked up and this time, she did squeak in surprise.

  Two glowing green dots – eyes! They were eyes! – were watching her from the far end of the corridor.

  If she were a rat, she’d run too.

  But she was not a rat. She held the lamp high in her shaking hand. The dots resolved t
hemselves in a black mass, darker than the shadows around it.

  “Oh. Oh! Here, puss, puss,” she said. She took one step forward and the click sounded again, and the eyes closed abruptly.

  She went on, thrusting the lamp out in front of her. The cat did not move. In fact, as she got close to it, she realised it was never going to move. It had not twitched, or run, or caught a rat in a very long time. She put the lamp on the floor and squatted by the stuffed animal, and reached out to tentatively touch it. It was solid, and cold, and unnervingly lifelike. The lamp’s light was reflected in two glass beads set where its eyes had once been.

  But they had lit up. They had lit up at the same time as the click had sounded. She nearly laughed. She stood up and pushed at the thing with her foot, not wanting to touch it again with her bare skin. It moved slightly, and revealed a wire that ran from underneath its belly and into a crack between two floorboards.

  She left it as it was, and retraced her steps, probing each step until she found the spot that had triggered the cat’s eyes again. Click. And the green light shone out. She shook her head and laughed to herself. She had read about a similar experiment in an issue of Popular Mechanic magazine; the owner of a stately home with a rat problem had created exactly this kind of thing. She knelt and found that the floorboard was loose. She prised it up and there it was, just as she expected; the other end of the wire, and a small gap between them. A large and ungainly set of batteries was next to it. The circuit was completed when something pressed down. The space was very tiny, and easily triggered by a fat rat. Her own footstep had pressed it even further, hence the audible click, and the wire was now bent, but the circuit still completed and let the current flow.

  She admired it. And she knew exactly who had made this device. It must have been the work of the lonely, silent Tobias. She replaced everything exactly as she found it, and went back downstairs to sit at the table in the side room, and ponder the situation.

  She had not found the cause of the screams. It irked her. But it was clearly linked to the boy’s clever antics, and as far as she was concerned, this proved everything.

  Almost everything.

  She poured herself a little rhubarb cordial from the tray of things that Mrs Peck had brought to her, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, and tried to work out how she would recreate night time screaming if she were a bored young man in an empty house. He had knowledge of electrical matters, and a practical and inventive mind; and he obviously read Popular Mechanic.

  There was one more question that she tried to ignore. The rat-scarer had a clear purpose. So what exactly was the screaming supposed to achieve?

  The boy had shown himself to be precise and practical. She had to work out why he would do such strange things.

  Six

  Marianne woke as the morning light filtered through the window. She hadn’t drawn the curtains, and the day promised to be one of those bright, clear, sharp days that made her think of mulled cider and ginger biscuits and the approach of the festive season. She was curled on the couch, and stiff in all her limbs. It was a solidly stuffed piece of furniture with wooden arms and a thinly upholstered back, and only really designed for perching upon with one’s skirts spread out prettily. She rolled to her feet and stretched and yawned. At least she’d had some sleep this time.

  She went out and found a thin young woman carrying a bucket of ashes, and asked her if she might bring warm water to her room. This time, when Marianne went to join Mrs Newman at breakfast, she was feeling a little more human, having had a wash.

  Tobias kept his head bowed.

  Mrs Newman did the serving, in a gracious way, leaving Mrs Peck and the girl to see to things in the kitchen. Once they were all settled in their places, she asked if Marianne had made any progress.

  Marianne glanced at Tobias as she said, “Yes, I have. I’ve made a startling discovery about what is going on here.”

  The boy made no movement save for the lifting of his fork to his mouth. But Mrs Newman straightened up. “Oh! Oh?”

  “Tobias,” Marianne said. “You are a clever boy. Did you enjoy practical matters when you were at school? You were sent away to school, weren’t you?”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Until the accident, yes, he was away in the country,” Mrs Newman said. “Sadly, as we discussed, circumstances have left him rather unable to return. At present.”

  At present? Mrs Newman had said it was due to the financial situation. That wouldn’t improve, and she knew that feeling well. Perhaps Mrs Newman was trying to hide the impossibility of returning to school from him, but that was surely wrong in the long term. Anyway, the boy was not stupid and he would surely be aware of what stood in his way. She said, “But you’re continuing to study and keep busy, aren’t you, Tobias?”

  He nodded again.

  “And your latest project has a noble aim. You are ridding Rosedene of rats, isn’t that right?”

  He looked up at her in surprise. He had light hazel-coloured eyes, and skin so pale she thought he might burn up red on a winter’s day if he stepped outside into the sun.

  “Rats?” Mrs Newman said sharply.

  “Forgive me. An old house like this cannot fail to have its share of pests and creatures. But Tobias has been very clever in setting up a little electrical trick in the attic to scare them away. I am impressed,” she added, addressing Mrs Newman. “He has done it perfectly and with great skill.”

  Mrs Newman put her cutlery down very carefully. She said, in a frighteningly level voice, “Tobias. What have you done?”

  He muttered, “Scaring off rats, like she said.”

  Marianne did not want the lad to be in trouble. She hastily described the whole set-up, praising his cleverness and ingenuity in what he had managed to create, and its efficiency too.

  Eventually, Mrs Newman said, “Well, then. I can see the reasoning, at least, but Tobias; you really should have told me what you were doing. And now, what about the noises? They cannot be linked, surely?”

  Marianne kept her eyes on Tobias. “I would wager that they are.”

  He looked up again, and made direct eye contact. “No, they are not! They are nothing to do with me, nothing.”

  “I am not blaming you,” Marianne said. “I only suggest that they might be a by-product of your experiments, that is all.”

  “No,” he said flatly. “There is no circumstance that would make those noises. Nothing of my doing.”

  Marianne turned to Mrs Newman. “Perhaps...”

  But Mrs Newman shook her head, too. “No. For all his faults, this boy is not a liar. He is the most honest lad I have met. If he says that he has not caused the noise, then he has not. Which only leaves one conclusion, as we discussed before.” She raised her chin and looked at the ceiling, affecting an air of crushed despair.

  Marianne was surprised at Mrs Newman’s words. The previous night, she’d called Tobias “the most unpersonable boy” she had ever met, alluding to his lack of character. Now she was defending him in the face of all reason.

  “The only conclusion is that someone else is making the sound,” Marianne said. “Either accidentally or deliberately.” Perhaps she ought to look to Mrs Peck. Although how the housekeeper had got from her room to the corridor, and why she was causing such chaos, was such a mystery that it was exceedingly unlikely.

  “Well,” said Mrs Newman, “Who would that be? My dear aunt cannot leave her bed. Initially, she called for mediums to help but they could not. They used the talking board, as I told you, but got nothing but gibberish. At her behest, I called the authorities, suspecting foul play, and they found nothing. They involved you, a specialist in trickery and illusions, which I supported, and you have discovered nothing. I am a sceptical woman, as you know, and I am not comfortable with my conclusion but...”

  “But you are saying that the noise does have a supernatural origin?”

  “I do not want to believe it. I cannot believe it. And yet I
can no longer see any other option. We must accept it, at last.”

  Marianne shook her head. “There must be something else. Might I speak to Miss Dorothea Newman before I leave? Would you introduce me?”

  MRS NEWMAN WENT TO prepare her aunt for Marianne’s visit. Marianne followed and waited in the corridor, listening hard to Mrs Newman’s conversation, but it all seemed entirely innocent. Dorothea Newman spoke in a quivering voice. “Do you mean the woman who startled me the other night? She said that she was with the police. A lady-clerk? A police matron? Oh, no? Very well, then.”

  So she retains her memory, thought Marianne, and seems perfectly lucid. Marianne was shown in, and Mrs Newman fussed over the pillows before leaving quietly.

  Marianne assumed she would linger in the corridor and eavesdrop, of course.

  Miss Dorothea Newman was nothing more than a wrinkled face surrounded by fabric and frills. She had a cotton lace-edged nightcap covering her head completely, and a high-necked gown that poked out above the layers of sheets and blankets, topped off with a stitched sateen quilt in the Durham style, all curling leaves picked out in tiny stitches. Her eyes were small, pale and bright.

  “Well?” she said. “Come closer. I can barely see you.”

  Marianne moved to the side of the bed, feeling awkward. Phoebe would have been holding the woman’s hands by now, and showering her with warm platitudes. Marianne was a harder sort, and she regretted that, but such was her nature. She’d learned her bedside manner from Mrs Crouch, after all. “Can you see me now?” she asked.

  “Hmph. You’re less of a blob now.”

  “Miss Newman, I heard that noise again last night. Did you?”

  “Yes. Dreadful screaming. Oh, do call me Dorothea. I am too old for fanciness.”