by Sarah Rayne
And then, one evening, without any warning, he made a statement that shattered Olivia’s world into pieces.
They were in the study – it was still Gustav’s sanctum, but Olivia was permitted in there after supper so that she could do her homework at the big table, with her uncle in his usual corner by the stove. The theory was that she could ask for his help with her homework. The reality was that he was never able to read anything she showed him on her laptop. The light was always wrong – or the glare of the screen hurt his eyes – or he could not be doing with laptops and fiddly keyboards. One day Olivia was going to insist that proper lights were fitted in this room, and that the stove, with its oily-smelling heat, was torn out and an ordinary fireplace put in its place. Except that she could never do any of that, because they could not risk having work of any kind done to the cottage in case workmen found what was in the cellar.
She had been attempting to untangle the component plot threads of Bleak House that evening, and to write an essay about them that would satisfy Miss Madeley’s critical eye in English literature, when Gustav spoke.
He said, ‘I’ve made a decision. If I’m going to die—’
‘You aren’t.’ Olivia spoke a bit absently, being absorbed in the complex past of Lady Dedlock. ‘Not for ages, anyway. Angina isn’t a killer – the doctor said so. Two doctors said so. You’ve just got to take your medication and do all the other things they told you.’
‘… I can’t face dying with Imogen Amberton on my conscience,’ he said, as if she had not spoken. ‘I’m going to confess what happened that night. I’m going to the police about it. I shan’t involve you, of course – I shall explain it was an accident, and that I panicked. I shall say very clearly that you weren’t there – that you knew nothing about it. They’ll be told I pushed her and she fell down the stairs.’
‘You can’t tell them,’ said Olivia, staring at him in horror. ‘You mustn’t.’
‘I can. I will. The guilt – it’s eating away at me. That’s what these chest pains are. I don’t care what name they gave it at the hospital, that’s what it is.’
In the dim light, his eyes were dark pits, and his lips were compressed into a thin, bloodless line. Olivia stared at him, and thought: he’s mad. He must be mad to be saying all this – to be threatening to tell people about Imogen’s death. He’s not just melancholy and depressed, he’s descended into a dark, quiet madness.
But she said, firmly, ‘The chest pains are angina; you had tests – an ECG and that other thing on that machine—’
‘Her family never knew what happened to her,’ he said, as if speaking to himself.
‘She didn’t have any family, except that aunt who didn’t care about her.’
‘And I prevented her from being given a traditional funeral. From being laid properly to rest.’
Olivia abandoned Lady Dedlock and went over to him. ‘You’re wrong about all this,’ she said, gripping his arm. ‘And as for a funeral – Imogen wouldn’t have cared tuppence about a conventional funeral. She wasn’t that kind of person.’
‘I can’t help that. I can’t live with this guilt any longer – I really can’t. You’ll be safe, though,’ he said, with a sudden flare of the consideration he had displayed that night. ‘I told you: I won’t bring you into it. I can quite easily say I was the one who pushed her accidentally down the stairs, that I panicked because I could see how questionable the whole situation would seem to people – a man of my age and a girl of seventeen in a dark cellar together. And whatever they do to me, you’re old enough to live on your own now. You’re eighteen next week, and in the eyes of the law that’s an adult. There’s a bit of money put away. Not a fortune, but enough. And some insurances after I’ve gone. It all comes to you. Oh, and you’d inherit a seat on the Tulliver Scholarship board, of course. That brings a small fee.’
‘But – can’t you see that if you tell the police what happened, you won’t be able to keep me out of it!’ cried Olivia, desperately. ‘I live here – I was here when it happened. It was term-time – I wasn’t away or on holiday or anything. It’s impossible that I wouldn’t have known about it.’
‘The police will take my word that you didn’t know,’ he said, maddeningly sure of himself. ‘I’m a former headteacher at Cresacre School – a member of the Tulliver Scholarship board. I suppose the word of such a man will be worth something.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Olivia in exasperation. ‘Can’t you see that if you do this, you won’t be able to keep me out of it. At best they’ll think I helped you cover up her death. At worst they’ll think I killed her.’
A sudden silence fell, and Gustav looked at her with an expression she had never seen before. The moment lengthened, and then he looked away.
‘My mind’s made up,’ he said. ‘That girl – she haunts me. When I sleep she’s in my dreams.’ His eyes were inward-looking, and it was as if all the flesh had suddenly fallen away from his bones. ‘I can’t live with it any longer – knowing her body’s in this cottage,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell the police what happened – a version of what happened, at any rate. An accident, and I was to blame, that will be the story. I’ve already told you I’ll keep you out of it. But they’ll excavate the cellar, and they’ll bring her out.’
He went back to the book he was pretending to read, as if that was an end to the matter.
Olivia tried to return to Bleak House, but his words had lodged in her mind. I can’t live with it any longer …
Perhaps he shouldn’t be allowed to live with it. Because perhaps he knew what had really happened that night.
For the next two nights Gustav sat at his desk, scratching away at his papers, frowning, deleting, tearing up one sheet and consigning it to the stove, and starting a fresh page. He’s writing a confession, thought Olivia. Oh God, what do I do? Might the police simply regard him as an eccentric – you heard how people frequently confessed to crimes they could not have committed. But surely not more than two years after the crime.
On the third night, Gustav wrote his signature at the foot of a page, added the date, and shuffled the few papers into a large envelope. Was he intending to post them? No, surely he would not do that. But it was looking as if Olivia would have to move quickly.
It was November, and torrential rainstorms were turning the little woodland around the cottage into a lake of mud. Olivia had to slush her way to and from school in ugly, uncomfortable wellingtons. One or two of the girls made hurtful jokes about them.
The morning after Gustav finished writing his confession, Olivia went up to the school as usual, got through the day’s lessons somehow, and plodded splashily home in the despised wellingtons at four o’clock. When she let herself into the cottage, the hall was in darkness, although she could see a line of light under the study door. It would not have occurred to Gustav to get up and switch on any other lights so that Olivia did not have to come into an unfriendly, unlit hall. Nor would it have occurred to him to switch on the cooker or look in the fridge or the freezer to see what they could have for supper.
As she took off her raincoat and hung it up to dry, she had the feeling that Infanger Cottage was sliding down into its dark, menacing mood – the mood that had engulfed it on the night Imogen died, and that had still been there on the following night, when Olivia had thought she had heard Imogen trying to get free. That had been the night she had found the silver ring. She had put it away in the little rosewood jewellery box that had belonged to her mother. She did not remember her mother – she did not remember either of her parents because she had only been two at the time of the car crash that killed them. She did not actually have any jewellery to speak of, but the box was a nice thing to have, and it was useful for storing away small private things.
Small private things … A silver ring that might have belonged to a murdered girl from two centuries earlier.
And a recording, on an old-fashioned cassette, of a girl’s voice singing in a dark cellar.
Olivia had never destroyed the recording of Imogen and what she thought of as Ginevra’s song. Gustav had asked her to do so the day after Imogen’s death, and Olivia had said she had burned it in the stove. He had accepted that.
But the cassette had not been burned. Olivia had no idea why she had kept it, but she had. Once or twice she had thought she should get rid of it, but she never had. Now it seemed that some instinct might have been at work, prompting her to secretly keep it.
She washed up the supper things, and waited for her uncle to come out of the study. He always went into the sitting room in the evenings now, sitting there with the whisky bottle, watching television until after the ten o’clock news. Here he came now, shuffling his feet a bit as he usually did nowadays, muttering about the badly lit hall, even though he was the one who insisted on dim bulbs. Olivia waited until she heard the creak of the sitting-room door, and then the faint chink of the whisky bottle.
She went back to the kitchen and took a pack of batteries from a cupboard. Then she went into the study, unplugged the cassette player, thrust it under her sweater, and scooted up the stairs to her bedroom.
Gustav had not used the cassette since he finished The Martyrs, and Olivia had no idea if it still worked. As she slotted the batteries in, her heard was racing. Was she really going to do this? And then she thought of the written confession in Gustav’s own hand, the envelope containing it lying on his desk, and she thought of what would almost certainly happen if he did tell the police everything, and she knew she was certainly going to do it.
She turned the volume to Low and pressed the Play switch. There was a faint whirr, and then, very softly, Imogen’s voice came into the room.
‘Step by measured step the murderers came to me …’
Olivia pressed Stop at once. Her hands were shaking and she wanted to rip the cassette out and tear it to ribbons. She had not expected to be in the least affected by hearing Imogen’s voice, but she was very affected indeed.
But if the recording upset her so much when she knew it to be simply a recording, what would hearing it do to a man in poor health, a man with heart problems; a man who would believe, even for a few moments, that he was hearing the singing of a girl whose dead body was only yards away from him?
She made herself wind the tape back and play the whole thing from the start. This time it was easier, and she played the recording twice to make sure there were no flaws. There were not. Imogen had sung the chant twice over, with a brief pause in between. Altogether it lasted for about six minutes. Was that long enough for what she wanted? It would have to be.
It seemed to take forever for the clock to reach ten o’clock, and for the television news to begin. Olivia pretended to watch it and made one or two ordinary comments so that her uncle should not think anything was wrong.
At quarter past ten she yawned, and got up, saying she was ready for bed.
‘I’ll take a book up with me,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
Gustav nodded and mumbled goodnight, and Olivia went out, making sure to leave the door slightly ajar so she could hear him come out. She collected the cassette player from her bedroom, and went stealthily back down the stairs. The news was still going on and the sitting-room door was shut. Good.
She drew back the bolt Gustav had fitted to the door after Imogen died; it scraped against the metal, and Olivia’s heart leapt in case Gustav heard and came out to see what she was doing. But he did not. He would listen to the weather forecast at the end, then he would switch off the lights.
The door came open easily enough, and Olivia stepped through. She was relieved that there was a reasonable overspill of light from the hall. Leaving the door open, she made a cautious way down the stone steps, and crouched at the foot, waiting and listening. It was cold and she kept looking over her shoulder to make sure nothing stirred in the dark corners.
The minutes stretched out. Had Gustav fallen asleep in his chair? This did not happen often, but it had happened once or twice. Olivia felt a stab of annoyance, because it would be like her uncle to spoil things by choosing tonight to fall into a whisky-induced slumber.
She heard the ending music for the TV news, and very faintly a voice announcing the weather forecast. The floorboards creaked as Gustav got up and walked across the room, and then the television was switched off. Olivia’s heart was pounding, but her hand was firmly on the Play switch. In another moment – less than a moment – he would come along the hall … Yes. Here he was now. He was passing the hallstand with the oval mirror – would he see that the cellar door was open? In four steps he would turn onto the stairs to go up to his bedroom. Now? Yes, now!
It was astonishing and unnerving how the singing echoed and spun around the cellar. The volume was turned to high, but there was hardly any tinniness from the small speakers, hardly anything to tell that this wasn’t a living girl, singing.
And Gustav heard it. Olivia heard him gasp and then call out, ‘Who’s there? Olivia? Where are you?’
His voice was sharp with fear – was he too afraid to look into the cellar? No, he was there now, outlined in the doorway. Still holding the cassette player, Olivia began to walk stealthily back to the wall – step by measured step, inch by measured inch – so that it would seem as if the invisible singer was moving away.
She could still see Gustav. He was turning his head from side to side like a questing animal, trying to see through the thick darkness below.
‘Olivia?’ he said again.
The tape had reached the second recording, and this time Gustav said, ‘Imogen?’ His voice sounded odd and ragged, as if he might be forcing the word out, and Olivia saw his right hand come up to the left side of his chest. She inched the volume up to its maximum.
‘Breath by measured breath, my life is being cut off from me …
Heartbeat by measured and precious heartbeat, my life is ending …’
Then Gustav gasped and seemed to claw the darkness, as if for air. A choking, retching noise came from his throat, like somebody trying to be sick, then his knees sagged and he crumpled to the ground.
Olivia did not move. She remained seated on the stone floor, near to the bricked-up alcove, for a very long time. She played Imogen’s recording several times. Eventually, very distantly, she heard St Chad’s clock chime. Midnight. Only then did she get up and go across to the stone steps and make her way upstairs. It was vaguely annoying that she had to step over Gustav’s body to get out to the hall. It was good, though, to discover that he had fallen into the hall itself, rather than onto the head of the steps. It meant Olivia could shut the door of the cellar without having to move him.
Everyone was very kind to her. Dreadfully sad for her to lose her uncle, they said – her only family, hadn’t he been? Oh, dear. And how shocking that she had found the body herself – that she had actually come downstairs to make breakfast, thinking it was an ordinary day, and had found his body lying there, stiff and cold.
The doctor who came said there would probably have to be a post mortem, but that he was certain it had been a myocardial infarct.
‘Heart attack,’ he said, as Olivia looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Coronary. He was at risk of it with that unstable angina he had.’ He patted her arm and said although there would have to be a post mortem, he thought it unlikely that an actual inquest would be needed, because Gustav had had the angina for some time. The cause of death was clear and simple and there was nothing in the least suspicious about it. It was a bad thing to happen, but Olivia would get through it somehow. Life went on.
Life went on, and exams had to be taken, and finances had to be sorted out, and legalities regarding the transfer of Infanger Cottage’s ownership to Olivia needed to be dealt with. There would be a tiny income from an annuity that Gustav had purchased some years ago, and there were a couple of insurance policies, the money from which could be carefully invested. There would be the Tulliver board as well, of course, and the quarterly fee for attending the managing meeti
ngs. Olivia would have to be twenty-one to take up the seat, though – the original trust deed specified that.
Still, there was one good thing; since Olivia had just reached her eighteenth birthday, it meant she could inherit the cottage outright.
After the furore died down, Olivia discovered that, although she did not regret what she had done, she was quite sorry about it. It could not be helped, though. She could not have let Gustav tell people the truth about Imogen’s death.
She found that she did not mind living on her own, although she would not want it to be for ever. The problem was that she did not dare try selling the cottage, because it would almost certainly result in Imogen’s body being found. Anyone who had watched TV crime programmes knew about forensic science and DNA tests and all those other things, and Olivia knew that Imogen would be identified, even after so many years. So she would have to think of another way to get away from this narrow, tedious life, and out into the world.
After a time it occurred to her that if she could find a way to get The Martyrs performed, that could be the way. She could tell people she was doing it as a memorial to her uncle. She found this surprisingly easy to do. After a while she believed it.
TWENTY-TWO
Sitting in the study with the coffee she had made for Arabella cooling, Olivia thought, even at this distance, that she had managed Gustav’s murder extremely well. She had not wanted to kill him, of course, and she did not want to kill Arabella now. If you are sane, you do not kill anyone. You do not even contemplate it. Olivia knew this perfectly well. But she also knew it was only the really sane people who could recognize when their safety was imperilled and who could find the resolve to kill. And, in such a circumstance, the act of murder could be permissible.
The act of murder.
She had not been down to the cellar since the night of Gustav’s death, but now she collected a torch and walked along the hall. The bolt fitted to the door all those years ago was still in place, of course. She expected to find it had rusted into its moorings, but it had not, or not very much. After two attempts, it slid back, and there was a creak as the old timbers moved slightly. Olivia took a deep breath, and pulled the door open.