Song of the Damned

by Sarah Rayne

  He turned back to the desk, and this time a name on one of the papers on the top of the untidy pile leapt out at him. The writing was the graceful slanting hand of at least a century ago. It would not be easy to read the writing of the main body of the page, but a few lines down was a name that leapt out at Phin.

  Sir John Chandos.

  He looked away almost at once, but the name had already printed itself on his mind, like sun-dazzle. John Chandos. Chandos. The vanished manor house of Cresacre, and the almost-forgotten family whose name now only lingered in the dim stones of the church. The church that had those disturbing illustrations of the Lemurrer. It was still unthinkable to read this document. Phin reminded himself that he was here to provide an opinion about The Martyrs and not delve into the disappearance of a band of nuns over two centuries earlier, or an elusive legend about someone called Ginevra, never mind wood carvings depicting an old ritual.

  But he had the impression of whirling jigsaw fragments trying to slot together in his mind – here and there fitting, but not making any real picture or any real sense, because too many of the pieces were still missing. Might it be just about acceptable if he took a very quick glance at the document to see if there was a date on it? If there was, and if it was during the late 1700s – the time the nuns vanished and the Ginevra legend began – then Phin would ask Olivia openly if he could read it. Part of his research, he would say.

  The room was growing darker, but when he looked across at the desk again he was able to read parts of the graceful writing, and to see that it looked like a letter. At the top was written the name of Master Alberic Firkin, Builder. Firkin was not a name you would easily forget; it was practically Dickensian.

  Just beneath this name was a date. June 1794. By this time, Phin had taken in the closing sentence as well. This might have been because it seemed to have been written with considerable force – as if the writer might have pressed his or her pen determinedly into the page to add weight to the words. Even after two centuries, they stood out black and thick.

  ‘I thank you for your letter, but must stress, Master Firkin, that no work of any kind whatsoever or wheresoever is to be carried out on Infanger Cottage or within its immediate environs. Nor is the cottage ever to be sold, but is to remain in its present state of ownership.’

  And not ten minutes earlier, Olivia Tulliver had said, ‘I could never sell this cottage. I would never dare.’

  She had instantly tried to counter this rather strange statement by saying she did not want to go against the wishes of her uncle who had bequeathed her the cottage, but taken in conjunction with the emphatic tone of that sentence penned more than two hundred years ago, it was still a very curious thing to have said.

  Phin cast politeness and the social niceties to the winds, picked up the letter and began to read it.

  THIRTEEN

  Master Firkin,

  It was the act of a good neighbour to draw attention to the fact that the roof of Infanger Cottage requires some attention. I thank you for this, although I have no doubt you had an eye to a little business on your own account.

  Phin could not decide if this was a jibe or a note of dry humour. He read on.

  As for your other enquiry, as to whether the cottage might be available for you to purchase, as you know – indeed, I believe as everyone in Cresacre knows – the cottage’s exact ownership has long since been in question. It stands partly on the land belonging to Sir John Chandos’s family, and partly on land owned by this convent – or, more specifically, by the convent’s mother house, which is near to Compiègne in France. No deeds as to the cottage’s precise boundaries have ever been found and I believe its foundations date back to the original monastery. Therefore, with the approval and knowledge of the legal advisers both to the Chandos family and to our own house, decisions as to its maintenance and occupancy have been jointly made by ourselves and Sir John Chandos.

  In my capacity as bursar, I am therefore able to advise you that Infanger Cottage will not, and indeed can not, become available for a purchase. Sir John wishes, unequivocally, for privacy for that piece of land. To that end, I believe he recently gave his gardener – you will know Dan, I am sure – clear orders to post signs warning that any acts of trespass on the land will be summarily dealt with.

  I appreciate that you think the cottage could be, as you term it, renovated and restored, and again, clearly this would be to your advantage, since you would most likely then sell it at a considerable profit to yourself. However, the decision can not and will not be altered, so I must ask that you do not approach me or the Chandos family again on this matter.

  I thank you for your letter, but must stress, Master Firkin, that no work of any kind whatsoever or wheresoever is to be carried out on Infanger Cottage or within its immediate environs. Nor is the cottage ever to be sold, but is to remain in its present state of ownership.

  I send you God’s blessings, and I am, good sir, yours very truly,

  The signature at the foot was in the same firm, clear hand.

  ‘Sister Cecilia, Bursar, Cresacre Convent.’

  Phin laid down the letter thoughtfully. It was strongly worded, and the refusal to sell the cottage or even to allow repair work to be done to it was a curious precursor of Olivia Tulliver’s words earlier.

  ‘I would never dare sell this cottage,’ she had said.

  Surely that was not an unreasonable statement, though, given that she seemed to have lived here for a very long time. As for John Chandos, he had probably been nothing more than an eighteenth-century squire protecting his interests – although Phin found it slightly odd that the letter appeared to have come from the convent’s bursar, rather than from Sir John himself, or a solicitor. Perhaps Sir John had simply been away from home at the time. It sounded as if the convent had power to act on his behalf.

  Phin was just wondering if he was falling into the classic researcher’s trap of linking two, if not three, unrelated pieces of information, when Olivia came back into the room. She was carrying a sheaf of manuscript swathed in bubble-wrap, and she placed it on the desk with what might almost have been reverence. Then she went back to the kitchen for the promised cup of tea, after which she moved a chair alongside Phin’s, unwrapped the manuscript, and began to turn over pages and point out scenes which Mr Fox must read with particular attention.

  ‘It’s based on the premise that the Cresacre nuns were involved in part of the French Revolution,’ she said. ‘A stirring story.’

  ‘It looks,’ said Phin, glancing through several pages and trying to bring critical and objective judgement to bear, ‘as if the structure is what’s usually known as tragédie en musique. Short arias contrasting with recitative – snatches of dialogue.’

  ‘The music itself is only composed for a piano,’ said Olivia, ‘but my uncle always said it wouldn’t be much of a task for someone with sufficient musical knowledge to transpose it into full orchestral.’

  ‘Did he really?’ said Phin, expressionlessly.

  ‘This scene here is a very strong one. The condemned cells. The guillotine is in the courtyard outside.’

  ‘It sounds very moving,’ said Phin, politely, and forbore to mention that the lyrics beginning, ‘Alas, for pity’s sake, spare the final blow …’ although perfectly appropriate for the scene, were lifted wholesale from Donizetti’s opera Maria Stuarda, shortly before the doomed Queen of Scots ascended the scaffold.

  ‘You could play any of the music now,’ said Olivia, suddenly. She indicated the piano. ‘It was my uncle’s piano, you know – it was what he used for all his composing. It’s out of tune, of course, but even so—’

  ‘Well, I won’t at the moment,’ said Phin. ‘I’ll read it all through first.’ He folded the bubble-wrap around the manuscript and stood up.

  ‘You are taking the manuscript straight back to the Black Boar, aren’t you?’ said Olivia, following him out to the hall. ‘You won’t be calling anywhere else on the way and leaving the manuscript
unattended in the car?’

  ‘No, I won’t be doing that. I’ll collect my car from the school, and go straight back to the pub. I have a meeting later, so I’d better get away now—’

  ‘It’s just that there are people who would give a good deal to get their hands on this – even though it’s only a copy. There was a journalist once – I thought I could trust him, but he turned out to be a real snake.’

  Phin remembered the earlier comment about an unscrupulous solicitor, and he remembered that Arabella had said something about Olivia getting mixed up with a couple of unfortunate men. He felt an unexpected twist of sympathy. ‘I’ll look after it very carefully,’ he said. ‘And I’ll phone you tomorrow or the day after, and arrange to return it.’

  He beat a swift retreat along the woodland path, reached his car with relief, and placed the manuscript in the boot. Driving down the wide carriageway, and turning towards the Black Boar, his mind went back to the letter. How much could be deduced from it? Either John Chandos or the mother superior or Sister Cecilia – or even all three of them – certainly sounded as if they had been hell-bent on keeping people away from the cottage. But there might be any number of relatively respectable reasons behind that letter. There might have been a quarrel between Chandos and the builder, or between the builder and the convent. Or Chandos might have been using the cottage for some secret purpose of his own. It would not be the first time a wealthy landowner had installed a mistress on his doorstep, although Phin could not see Sister Cecilia writing that letter under those circumstances.

  Perhaps the cottage had been a secret meeting place for plotters against some high-up figure in the government or even a member of royalty. How about the Terror in France? The favoured theory for the nuns’ disappearance seemed to be involvement in the Revolution, and the letter was dated 1794, which Phin thought was a time when the French Revolution had been at its height.

  As he neared the Black Boar, he smiled, thinking how much all this would please Arabella, and how she would immediately start spinning a whole new fantasy about the lustful manorial overlord. It was at this point that the Black Boar came into view, and he saw with a lurch of apprehension that standing outside were two fire engines and a paramedic’s car.

  Phin slammed the accelerator down hard, and rocketed the car forward, swerving into the pub’s car park, then leaping out and bounding towards the main doors.

  He was halted by a fireman who was just coming out, and who did not seem either fazed by a dire emergency or to be smoke- or soot-smeared.

  ‘I’m staying here,’ said Phin without preamble. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Oh, minor thing really. Flood on the top floor, but they called us out because of diverting the water from the electrics. They called a paramedic because one of the staff skidded on a wet patch of floor and they thought she’d broken her ankle.’

  Phin started to say, ‘How on earth—?’ and stopped, already suspecting the answer.

  ‘A scatter-brained female somehow dismantled a bath tap and water cascaded everywhere. It’s pretty much sorted out now, although the first floor’s still sopping wet. You might have to find somewhere else to spend the night.’

  ‘It was the kind of thing that could have happened to anyone,’ said Arabella. She was standing in about two inches of soapy water, which was not so very much, but which seemed to have washed across the entire upper floor of the Black Boar. The bedroom, as well as the small bathroom, smelled expensively of Arabella’s bath essence, and firemen were pumping out the overspill. The pub’s staff were scurrying around with mops and buckets and cloths.

  Phin could not decide whether to laugh or be exasperated, except that it was usually difficult to be exasperated with Arabella for very long.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, you see – oh, wait, I’d better help them, because that poor girl skidded and sprained her ankle and that was mostly my fault on account of I knocked over an entire bottle of bath cream in all the flurry, which is why everywhere smells like a Turkish bordello.’ Arabella seized a passing mop and bucket from a uniformed maid, and began energetically to mop up some of the water.

  ‘But how—’ began Phin.

  ‘I had a bath – well, I told you I was going to do that,’ said Arabella, mopping water with enthusiasm. ‘And there I was, lying in it with Classic FM on the radio – Schubert, as a matter of the fact the ‘Unfinished’, and I was just wondering whether it would make a good background for … well, for after dinner for the two of us.’

  ‘Not Schubert,’ said Phin, before he had realized what he was saying.

  ‘No?’

  ‘He’s too good a melodist. It’d be distracting, and … Arabella, will you for pity’s sake tell me how you managed to flood this entire floor!’

  ‘Schubert was just starting the second movement,’ said Arabella, ‘when I suddenly discovered that the tap had stuck in the on position – fortunately it was the cold tap. I couldn’t turn it off, so I leapt out of the bath, and I reached in to pull out the plug – well, yes, of course I pulled out the plug, Phin! – and I tried to unjam the tap, but that was when it snapped off altogether. And water started spurting out like a firework display, and it was going everywhere. Walls, ceiling, windows. Me. It absolutely drenched me. I switched Schubert off at that point, though.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Phin, rather helplessly.

  ‘I didn’t want the water to ruin the radio. I grabbed your dressing gown, because there wasn’t time to worry about getting properly dressed – and I’m eternally grateful you lent it to me, although I think it will have to be severely dry-cleaned, but I’ll foot the bill, of course, in fact I’ll buy you a whole new one, and it can even be from somewhere extravagant like Harrods.’ She indicated the hem of the dressing gown which, being too long for her, had trailed its hem in the water. ‘And I ran downstairs like one of the Four Furies to get help. I was perfectly respectable because of the dressing gown, so I think it was extremely rude of several men from the bar to wolf-whistle. I paid them no attention,’ said Arabella, with uncharacteristic dignity. ‘I said to the receptionist that the mains water needed turning off absolutely immediately because the first floor was about to succumb to a flood of Biblical proportions. That might have been an exaggeration, but it got them fired up to take action. Somebody found the stop-tap thing in a basement somewhere, although it took them ages, and when they did find it, it had rusted into its moorings, which isn’t surprising, because people never use stop-taps, do they? By then the water was all over the floor of the bedroom, and trickling out into the hall, so that was when we had to call the firefighters, in case it reached the electrics. Firefighters aren’t just for fires; they deal with floods and disasters as well, did you know that? I didn’t.’

  ‘I did know, as a matter of fact,’ said Phin, with a sudden vivid memory of Arabella’s ebullient cousin, Toby Tallis, who had an extraordinary facility for creating disasters and had twice caused devastation in Phin’s flat. It had been Toby who had introduced him to Arabella, which, on balance, Phin was still inclined to view as a good thing. ‘I do see how it all happened,’ he said. ‘And, Arabella, I hesitate to ask this, but—’

  ‘Where are we going to spend the night?’

  ‘Yes. Because it doesn’t look as if any of the rooms up here will be habitable.’

  ‘No, they won’t. Thankfully the other two rooms checked out earlier, so there would only have been the two of us up here. Which would have been nice, wouldn’t it?’ said Arabella, rather wistfully. ‘You, me and Schubert – oh, no, you said not Schubert. But what I did, I phoned Hats Madeley, and because it’s half-term and everything, we can be put up at the school.’

  Phin said, in an expressionless voice, ‘So our first night together – our first night actually sleeping under the same roof – is going to be in a boarding school?’

  ‘Yes, it will be.’ Arabella had abandoned the mop and bucket, and was making a disorganized attempt at packing a suitcase.
‘I know it’s a bit off-the-wall, but it’ll be perfectly comfortable, and Hats says she’ll put supper back so we can join her and Dilys Davy. The kitchen staff’s on half-strength because of half-term, and the temporary cook’s on a vegetarian mission. So supper is lentil soup and fishcakes.’

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ said Phin.

  In fact, the lentil soup was unexpectedly palatable and there were fresh wholemeal rolls with it. The fishcakes reminded Phin of his own schooldays, but at least here there was parsley sauce with them.

  Over a wedge of sharp Cheddar, which was served with celery and crisp apples, he was asked about his visit to Infanger Cottage. He said, guardedly, that he had met Olivia, who had seemed a bit over-focused on The Martyrs, and that he had been loaned a copy of it, which he would read over the next day or so. Yes, he added, it did appear to lean heavily on the theory of the French Revolution as a solution to the mystery.

  ‘How did you get on with Olivia?’ asked Harriet. ‘She was always rather an odd girl. A very poor judge of character, as far as I remember.’

  ‘She was a bit anxious about the cottage,’ said Phin. ‘Apparently she’s going to be served with a compulsory purchase order.

  ‘Oh, that’s for the road-widening thing,’ said Dilys Davy. ‘I heard about that.’

  ‘The planners say it’s inevitable,’ put in Harriet. ‘It won’t affect the school, because it’ll only slice a corner off on that bit of land, but it’ll certainly affect Infangers. A pity, I think.’

  Arabella said, ‘But isn’t Infangers too old to be bulldozed? Isn’t it listed or something?’