Song of the Damned

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘And as you go along the row of figures,’ said Phin, ‘you see the wall’s a little higher with each figure. Until at the end there’s just the blank wall.’

  ‘Wasn’t walling up a fate reserved for ladies found screwing where they shouldn’t?’

  It had probably been inevitable that if this question was going to be asked, it would be Arabella who would ask it. Phin waited with interest for the response.

  Harriet Madeley said, deadpan, ‘Clearly we never did teach you how to turn an elegant phrase, did we, Arabella?’

  Arabella grinned and Miss Davy said, ‘I believe you’re right, though, Arabella. And I think it’s correct to say it was especially licentious nuns who received that particular punishment.’ Her tone suggested she considered it had probably served the culprits right. ‘I’ve never heard of the Lemurrer, though,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean I’m questioning your judgement or your knowledge, Mr Fox.’

  ‘It’s quite an obscure ritual,’ said Phin, annoyed to hear the slight placatory note in his voice. ‘And it’s so far back, a lot of the details are lost. It was mostly practised in France, but it does seem to have trickled into this country here and there – I’d hazard a guess that it was brought over by the various migrations and invasions.’

  ‘The Norman Conquest wasn’t all good for everyone,’ observed Miss Davy.

  ‘Well, no. In the end,’ said Phin, ‘the early Church banned the Lemurrer, of course. I don’t know that they exactly objected to punishing wayward nuns, but they didn’t like the fact that the Lemurrer had so many elements of pre-Christian and pagan ritual. That figure there …’ He indicated the carving. ‘He looks as if he might be making the Sign of the Cross.’

  Miss Madeley said, ‘You’re saying the Lemurrer might once have been celebrated – is that the right word? – in Cresacre? That someone might have been walled up alive? In the church? In this building?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s unusual to find a carving portraying it,’ said Phin. ‘Especially in a church, and then repeated here.’

  ‘There’s never been any record or any suggestion of that kind of ritual being performed here,’ said Dilys. ‘Although I suppose that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Only that it was never found out.’

  ‘But somebody did find out,’ pointed out Phin. ‘Or somebody already knew about it. And whoever it was, blazoned it across the church door, and had the carving repeated in this room.’

  ‘Maybe the waller-upper did the blazoning,’ said Arabella, eagerly. ‘As a bizarre kind of confession. People flaunt the most astonishing things, don’t they? You’ve only got to think about the stuff that’s posted on social media – or Jack the Ripper sending letters saying how much he enjoyed eating his victims’ kidneys. And they say murderers are usually massively vain and they want to tell the world what they’ve done; although, of course, the waller-upper might have been mortified with guilt afterwards, and spent the rest of his life trying to wash off the mortar and brick dust in nightmares, like Lady Macbeth, wailing that all the perfumes of Arabia could never—’

  ‘You really should have taken to writing gothic horror, Arabella,’ said Miss Davy, repressively.

  Phin said, ‘I wonder if we could find out who commissioned the church carving. Miss Davy, you said you’d made a study of local history. Would you know local people, and church authorities?’

  ‘Well, it’s only a very amateurish study, but I could ask around.’ She looked pleased to be asked.

  ‘The Chandos family is mentioned a few times in the church,’ said Phin. ‘Could they have been involved? Who were they?’

  ‘They’ve long since died out,’ said Dilys. ‘I don’t think they contributed much to the area, and they aren’t really part of any local lore.’

  ‘Always a pity when that happens,’ said Harriet. ‘But there it is; the old order changes, giving way to the new. More tea, Mr Fox?’

  Olivia had watched the post every morning since sending her letter to Harriet Madeley. Harriet might not write, of course. She might phone or she might even call at the cottage. So after posting the letter, Olivia cleaned the cottage as thoroughly as its decrepit condition would allow, checking the phone after vacuuming the rooms, in case it had rung and she had not heard it.

  Then, on the third morning, a letter in a thick white envelope came through the door, and Olivia seized it eagerly. This would be it – she might have known that Harriet Madeley would stick to the old-fashioned methods. She tore the envelope open, and drew out the contents.

  It was not from Harriet Madeley. It was from the local county council – the planning department – and it was an offer of purchase for Infanger Cottage by them. Olivia read the letter with incredulity and mounting fear. The fear threatened to swamp her, making it difficult to take the letter’s contents in, but she forced herself to read the letter again, because clearly she had misunderstood.

  She had not misunderstood at all. The council said they would be widening the road that ran alongside the school’s eastern boundaries, and a slip road would have to be created. That slip road would slice right across the patch of land on which the cottage stood, hence the request to buy the cottage and the land. Miss Tulliver was pleased to dial the contact number provided on the letter to arrange a convenient time for a surveyor to call to make an appraisal of the property. After that, a fair and honest offer would be made.

  Olivia was shaking violently, as if she was about to have flu. It had never occurred to her that anything like this would ever happen – all those sayings about an Englishman’s home being his castle. Now, it seemed, council departments could arrogantly demand you sold your house to them.

  She was not, of course, going to agree to sell the cottage, because she would never sell it to anyone, and this was something that could be dealt with. All she had to do was phone the writer of the letter, saying she was not prepared to sell. She would make the phone call saying this, and she would send a letter confirming it. She began to feel better. Then she read the second page of the letter.

  ‘We hereby give notice that if a reasonable and fair purchase cannot be agreed, it may be necessary to invoke a Compulsory Purchase Order, in accordance with the Acquisition of Land Act of 1981. Under such circumstances, please be assured that a fair market value would be paid for the property and compensation would be arranged to cover moving, legal, and other related expenses.

  ‘Notes regarding CPO procedure are enclosed for your guidance, together with the description of the property that has been prepared, and a map delineating the course the new road and slip road will take.’

  Olivia unfolded the enclosed notes, horror sweeping over her. The CPO notes were full of phrases about subordinate legislation and Highways Acts and something called a ‘compelling case in the public interest’. This was utter nonsense. There was nothing compelling about any of this, and it was not in anybody’s interest to buy and tear down this cottage.

  For a wild moment or two she actually wondered if she could accept. To be given money – money that might include compensation – that would enable her to buy a house somewhere else … To find a normal life away from Cresacre and all the smothering memories …

  But even as the thoughts were forming, a sly soft voice in her mind was saying, Stupid! Of course you can’t sell this cottage! You can’t ever sell it and you can’t ever leave it – you know that, you’ve known it for ten years. You can’t leave because of Ginevra.

  She reached for the phone to tell the officious, snooping, meddling council that Infanger Cottage was not, and never would be, available for purchase, not if they threatened her with fifty compulsory purchase orders.

  It was a week – a whole week! – before Olivia heard from the school about The Martyrs.

  Miss Madeley did not phone or call, she sent a polite letter, thanking Olivia for writing to her, and saying they had a music researcher and critic visiting the school during half-term week. She was going to talk to him about Olivia’s suggestion of s
taging The Martyrs, and she would be in touch again as soon as possible. The music researcher, whose name was Phineas Fox, might also want to talk to Olivia himself, so Miss Madeley hoped that could be arranged.

  She added that they were also hoping Mr Fox could stir up some publicity for them – for the choral concert in particular. She signed her letter with kindest regards, which Olivia thought they both knew was a lie.

  The letter was an insult. Olivia did not need the opinion of some pretentious music expert on The Martyrs. She knew everything there was to know about it, and if either Harriet Madeley or this Phineas Fox phoned her, she would not answer the phone.

  She was, in fact, starting to be very nervous of answering the phone or the door, because she did not trust the council planning people not to sneak their way inside, brandishing legal notices.

  The woman she had spoken to at the planning office had seemed to find it difficult to believe that anyone would actually want to continue living in a damp, mouldering cottage in the woods, and asked whether she had seen the new houses being built on what had been Cresacre Marsh out near Little Minching. Beautiful little semis, they were – ever so smart. Two bedrooms, and a garage and central heating. A shopping precinct within walking distance – a school, as well … Oh, Miss Tulliver did not have children? Still, you never knew, did you? As an apparent afterthought, she said, of course, it must be marvellous to live in such an historic old place as Miss Tulliver did.

  Olivia did not say that the cottage’s age was a nuisance. It even caused people to take advantage of you. The previous year she had been taken out to dinner by the local radio presenter. She had been flattered and excited at the thought of going out with somebody who worked in radio – she had even thought he might know people who could help with getting her uncle’s opera staged.

  But it transpired that he had only taken her out because he was compiling a programme about curious local buildings, and he thought he might use Infanger Cottage. He attempted to have sex with her in the taxi on the way home, failed embarrassingly, and was sick all over the back seat and Olivia’s best coat. The taxi driver sent Olivia the bill for the cleaning, and said he knew all about the kind of females who screwed drunken men in taxis, and please not to use his taxi service again. The coat was declared by the dry-cleaner’s to be beyond redemption.

  Olivia had been almost fifteen when she and Gustav had gone to live at Infanger Cottage.

  It stood on the edge of the Cresacre grounds, quite near to where the old Chandos mansion had once been, although nobody nowadays was sure about the exact boundaries, because the Chandos family had left things in a shocking muddle, and there were pieces of ground for which the ownership was uncertain. Infanger Cottage stood on one of those pieces of ground.

  But after a great deal of correspondence, and a number of explorations of shelves and forgotten corners of solicitors’ offices, it was agreed that the cottage and its bit of garden could be regarded as falling within the school’s environs. This was a decision that suited the school, because it meant Infanger was in their gift. It meant they could add it to the bribe they had put together to get rid of Gustav Tulliver. It also meant anyone who had had the smallest claim on the place no longer needed to worry about maintaining it.

  A wodge of papers tied with green tape was handed over. Gustav frowned over them for a while, then said he was now the owner of Infanger Cottage. He had been the victim of a conspiracy, though, he said, but it did not matter because he was going to compose a marvellous opera. He had had the idea in his mind for a very long time, and now he had the time to actually write the story – the libretto, it was called; Olivia might as well learn the right term. His eyes had burned with fervour, and patches of colour showed on his usually sallow cheeks.

  After living in the headteacher’s large apartment at the top of the school, Infanger seemed small and dingy. Gustav said it might be a bit run-down, but the governors had at least put in a workable bathroom and kitchen. He and Olivia had souls above crumbling plasterwork and scarred floorboards, and oil stoves that smelt like stale chip-fat when they got hot. As for Olivia’s schooling, she could become a day-girl at Cresacre and return to the cottage each evening to cook supper. He would be able to get a reduction in the fees.

  The Martyrs ate into those years. Gustav bought a second-hand upright piano, which he said did not have a very good tone, but which was all they could afford because of the pittance of a pension grudgingly awarded by the miserly governors.

  Infanger Cottage was surrounded by trees, and the rooms were quite dark, even in the daytime. Olivia thought they could put a light over the door – a lantern-type, which would be welcoming and warm, but Gustav said they had not the money to be spending on such things, and it would be a drain on the electricity, and they did not especially want to welcome people, because they did not want folk tramping in and out. He needed quiet and solitude for his work. He refused to have high-wattage light bulbs anywhere; it would create too much light, which would cause the past to shy away into obscurity, and he could not have that, not when he was trying to create scenes set in the 1790s. You had to immerse yourself in the time you were writing about, and dimness and shadows helped. Soon after they moved in, he ordered the local builder, B. Firkin & Sons, est. 1790, to put up shelves in his study, so that he could have all his books and his research notes around him. This made that room even darker.

  After the move, she heard people in the village saying it was a bit of a comedown for the Tulliver family to end up in a cottage. A strange old place it was, as well. Dark and gloomy, and you could not get a car along the narrow footpath that was its only means of access. It was a mite eerie, as well.

  Trimming trees was a costly exercise, but Olivia got used to the dim footpath each evening. She did not find the cottage particularly eerie, and Gustav was so deeply immersed in The Martyrs he would not have noticed if half a dozen ghosts clanked along the path every night and gibbered at all the windows.

  Not that there were ghosts, of course. At least, not at the beginning.

  Olivia had helped with the research for The Martyrs. She was not especially knowledgeable about music, but she liked being in the school choir, and last December they had sung Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from The Messiah as part of their end-of-term festivities, and the church’s Advent services. The entire school choir had joined forces with the church’s own choir; everyone had thought it had gone very well, and Miss Madeley had been very pleased indeed. It had been a bit of a let-down when Gustav said he had found most of the singing a bit shrill, and the alto very nearly tinny. He also said he considered it irreverent that one of the girls had had a sneezing fit halfway through. Sneezes could be suppressed, he said severely, and the sneezer had even seemed to deliberately time the sneezes so that they punctuated the most energetic of Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hall-e-lu-jah. Olivia did not say the sneezer had been Arabella Tallis, who had been hoping the recital would end early because she had a date with the organist’s son afterwards. She did not think that even Arabella could time sneezes quite so precisely, either.

  But she liked helping with The Martyrs. She had even visualized Gustav dedicating it to her. ‘To my dear niece, Olivia, for her invaluable and devoted help’. Something like that, anyway, because it was the kind of thing people did write as a dedication. If so, she would be immortalized. In years to come, people might even refer to her as ‘Tulliver’s Muse’, in the way they talked about Shakespeare’s Dark Lady.

  So when, one night after supper, Gustav suddenly said, ‘I need to hear a particular aria from The Martyrs sung aloud by a young soprano voice,’ Olivia’s heart jumped with delight. He would be remembering her successes in the school choir, of course (always allowing for the sneezing episode during The Messiah), and he wanted her to sing part of his work now.

  Then he said, ‘I thought about that girl who was in the Advent performance with you. I marked her particularly. I don’t remember her from my time, but she was in the front
row of the choir, at the centre. Long brown hair.’

  Sick disappointment swept over Olivia, and it was a moment before she could identify the girl. Then she said, ‘I think it was Imogen Amberton. She’s new since your time.’

  ‘Imogen, is it? Ah. Is she by way of being a friend of yours?’

  Olivia did not really have friends, and since becoming a day-girl she was not part of the evening life of the school – the little get-togethers in bedrooms, or in the TV room, or the giggling discussions in the girls’ common room, where homework was supposed to be done, but where it was more likely to hear discussions about boyfriends or make-up, and which often ended up spilling over into the boys’ common room anyway. Segregation at Cresacre was a fluid affair, except for the bedroom floors, where it was strictly enforced – although not always as strictly as Miss Madeley thought.

  But she said, ‘Imogen’s two or three years older than me, so I don’t know her very well. I think this is her last term.’ She did not, in fact, like Imogen very much, but she did not say so. She would like her even less if she was going to sing part of her uncle’s opera. She said, ‘She was under threat of expulsion last term.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, um, she went off by herself for a few days. Actually, she did the same thing just after Christmas. That was almost a week. The police were called both times.’ The police and Miss Madeley had been furious when on both occasions Imogen had turned up of her own accord. The rumour was that she had spent the time with a boyfriend, and that nightclubs had been involved. Olivia had never heard the truth, but Imogen’s own year had listened with delight to the tales she had brought back.

  ‘In my day there was no such thing as being under threat of expulsion,’ said Gustav. ‘She’d have been out there and then. But that’s not relevant for this. What sort of a girl is she?’

  ‘She’s a goth,’ said Olivia. ‘Outside school uniform everything she wears is black. She has a tattoo of a raven perched on a skull.’