Song of the Damned

by Sarah Rayne

  Olivia gave a shriek of fury. ‘You bitch!’ she shouted. ‘That’s Imogen’s recording! I didn’t mean to leave it down there – I only played it to get strength from it! But I know what it is – I was there when it was recorded!’

  The chanting stopped, and there was a curious scrape of sound, as if the tape had jumped or become tangled. The moment seemed to freeze, and Olivia turned her head towards the cellar door again.

  It’s now or never, thought Phin. Now, while she’s off-balance. But even as he moved, the chant started again. And this time it was different. It was fainter, but it was also deeper. It’s a man’s voice, thought Phin, startled.

  ‘Step by measured step with murderer’s tread …

  Inch by measured inch with murderer’s brain …

  Brick by careful brick with murderer’s hands …

  I make the layers of death …

  Quenching the light … stopping the heart …

  Murderer’s hands making the layers of death …’

  The last few words were only just audible – and they faded like a dying echo. But Olivia was already running towards the cellar door, the knife raised. Phin dodged back to avoid it, then tried to grab her arm from behind.

  ‘That’s not the recording,’ she shouted, and there was such terror in her voice that Phin flinched. ‘Who is it who’s down there? Who’s there?’

  She was at the head of the cellar steps now, and as Phin reached for her arms, he caught a glimpse of a figure walking across the dim cellar below. The Lemurrer words about murderer’s hands seemed to whisper on the darkness.

  Olivia screamed again, and pitched forward, and Phin snatched at her to save her from falling. It was too late, though. She had already begun to fall, and she went down the steps in a whirling tumble.

  As Phin scrambled after her, the dim movement below came again, then melted into the shadows of a far corner. From the other side of the cellar, Arabella said, ‘Get your phone from her pocket and call an ambulance, Phin.’

  ‘I think it’s too late, though,’ said Phin, bending down over the still figure to get the phone. As he tapped out 999, he said, ‘I think she’s broken her neck.’

  Olivia had broken her neck and it was certainly too late.

  ‘Tragic accident by the look of it,’ said the police sergeant who had been summoned, and who was taking notes.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ said Arabella. ‘She was a lonely, unhappy person, and I’m very sorry indeed about what happened.’

  ‘What did happen exactly? We’ll need to put together statements.’

  Phin glanced at Arabella, then said, ‘Olivia wanted us to look at the old cellar. Arabella had had an idea that it might have some historic interest – that it might help Olivia to fight a compulsory purchase order.’

  ‘Ah, that’ll be the road widening,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard about that.’

  ‘We were looking at the cellar,’ said Arabella. ‘I was down there already, and Phin was up here, and Livvy – Olivia – was going down the steps because I’d found a brick arch that looked medieval, so we were going to photograph it.’

  ‘But she was behaving a bit oddly,’ said Phin. ‘She thought – she seemed to think someone else was down there.’ He quenched the odd half-memory of a figure whisking across the dimness – a figure who had certainly not been Arabella.

  ‘She seemed to think there might be people trapped in the cellar,’ said Arabella, carefully. ‘But …’

  She broke off, and Phin said, ‘But it seemed to both of us that she was a bit … well, unbalanced. Perhaps living out here on her own for so long—’

  ‘Enough to send anyone a bit odd,’ said the sergeant, looking about him. ‘You said she missed her footing on the stairs?’

  ‘Yes. It was as simple as that. They’re very steep steps – as you saw.’

  ‘I did. There’ll need to be a post mortem,’ he said. ‘And, unfortunately, an inquest. You’ll most likely be asked to give evidence – is that all right?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  He shut his notebook and prepared to leave. ‘Strange old place this, isn’t it? Been here a good long time, of course. What’re those heaps of books lying around in the hall?’

  ‘No idea. We thought she’d been sorting out books for the charity shop,’ said Arabella.

  ‘Her uncle’s old books, that’d be,’ said the sergeant. ‘Sad if that family’s ended – there’s been a Tulliver here for a very long time; all the way back to the first one who set up the scholarship.’

  Phin pounced on this. ‘Sergeant, it sounds as if you’re a local man. Do you know anything about the Tulliver Scholarship? Its origins, I mean?’

  ‘A bit. Not much. They say some chap who worked for the old Chandos estate started it all. Hauled himself up by his bootstraps, as the saying goes. Married the squire’s daughter. Give me a minute and I’ll remember his name.’ He frowned, and Phin waited.

  ‘Got it!’ said the sergeant, triumphantly. ‘Dan, that was it. Dan Tulliver.’

  Phin said, softly, ‘Dan. Of course.’

  ‘Word is that Dan and his lady lived here for a while,’ said the sergeant. ‘Her family disowned her for marrying a workman. Different times then, of course. Don’t know where he got the money for the scholarship. They did a good deal to help children from poorer homes, though. Dan Tulliver’s remembered with a lot of respect in this area.’

  ‘I’m glad we agreed to keep the full story quiet,’ said Phin, after the sergeant had left, having extracted a promise that they would slam the door of the cottage when they left, and present themselves at the police station on the morrow to sign their statements.

  ‘I’m glad, as well,’ said Arabella. ‘She certainly intended to put me – and then you – out of the way. But she was clearly mad, and it would have … somehow it would have spoiled the scholarship and all it stands for if the truth had become known.’

  Phin said, slowly, ‘She talked about bricking things up – about hearing something crying and tapping to get out.’ He shuddered.

  ‘And she knew about that recording – she said she was there when it was made.’ Arabella looked at him. ‘Is there something down there, Phin? Something that needs to be – um – uncovered? Because there was that girl who vanished – Imogen. I found a silver ring in this cottage that I think was hers.’

  ‘I think there is something,’ said Phin, slowly. ‘I think it might go back quite a long way, though.’ His mind had gone back to the letter from Sister Cecilia to Alberic Firkin, over two hundred years earlier.

  ‘Sir John wishes unequivocally for privacy for that piece of land,’ she had written. And then, ‘I must stress that no work of any kind whatseover or wheresoever is to be carried out on Infanger Cottage … Nor is it ever to be sold, but is to remain in its present state of ownership …’

  ‘Do we report that part of it?’ Arabella was saying.

  ‘I don’t think we need to,’ said Phin, thoughtfully. ‘Now that Olivia’s dead, I should think the compulsory purchase order will go ahead. Infanger Cottage will be demolished, and any secrets down there will come to light. And I think I’d rather it happened like that – at somebody else’s hands – than for us to tell the police what really happened here this afternoon. Because if there is anything down there, it wouldn’t automatically be laid at Olivia’s door.’

  Arabella got out of her chair and came over to put her arms around him. ‘You’re a very nice person,’ she said. ‘Might we still be able to have that moussaka, do you suppose?’

  ‘I hope so.’ He smiled at her. ‘But before I can focus on moussaka, there are a couple of things I need to finish here.’

  ‘Part of the Lemurrer? And connected to Dan Tulliver? That name meant something to you, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll tell you properly later. Where’s that recording?’

  ‘I put it in the kitchen. Out of sight. I found it when I was looking for a way out of the cellar, and I accidentally pressed Play
– it was as black as pitch in that cellar, you know. When that singing started, I nearly had a fit, because it was the eeriest thing I’d ever heard. But then I thought if I ramped up the volume, somebody might hear it and realize I was locked in. I’d shouted so much my voice was starting to crack,’ she said. ‘Don’t look like that, Phin – my voice didn’t crack and I did get out. You got me out. Knight on white charger and all that.’

  Phin took a deep breath, and said, ‘I need to listen to that recording again.’

  They sat at the kitchen table. Phin played the recording twice.

  ‘It’s different,’ said Arabella, her elbows on the table, staring at the machine. ‘That last time I played it – when I was hoping it would spook Olivia and give you a chance to grab her – there was something else on it. Something I hadn’t heard until then. At the time I thought the tape had got tangled or something, and sort of wound back on itself. But right at the end it sounded as if a man was chanting.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The tape’s all right, though. And the voice isn’t there now, is it?’

  ‘No.’ Phin thought he would explain later about the murderer’s chant and Cecilia’s diary. He did not think he would ever be able to explain how a man’s voice had got onto this recording.

  He removed the cassette and dropped it in his pocket. He could probably transfer it to an MP3 or something similar, but he already knew he would destroy it.

  ‘You said there were two things?’ said Arabella. ‘What’s the other?’

  ‘I want to plunder Gustav Tulliver’s books.’ As Arabella looked startled, he said, ‘I want to see if he had anything that might have been composed by an Italian opera performer at the end of the eighteenth century.’

  ‘All right. I’ll help, shall I? What was the name of this Italian opera performer?’

  ‘Chimaera.’

  As they began the search, Phin told himself that Chimaera had almost certainly never written his planned opera. The reality was that Gustav Tulliver had read Ernest Quilt’s book and had lifted the scene about the turnkeys trying on victims’ clothes. He had read Cecilia’s journal in the school library, and lifted the Lemurrer as well. Which meant that expecting to find an opera score from the 1790s by the flamboyant Chimaera was the longest shot in the world.

  And then, from the hall where she was kneeling amongst the tumbled books, Arabella said, ‘Phin. I’ve found it.’

  And there it was. Battered, faded, dog-eared, edges curling, pages foxed. But with the name of Cesare Chimaera clear on the outside.

  Phin was almost afraid to open it. He had the absurd feeling that it might dissolve like cobwebs – that it was little more than chimerical itself. At some vague level of his mind he was deeply grateful to Arabella, who had gone quietly out of the room and left him alone.

  Inside the cover, folded into four, cracked and almost splitting with age, but with the words still perfectly clear, was a single sheet, handwritten and adorned with many flourishes. The address at the top was Milan, and the date was 1796.

  My very dear Gina and Dan,

  I send my felicitations on your marriage – I am, of course, desolate that I did not win your hand for myself, Gina, but I know Dan will make you very happy.

  In this package is my opera. When you read the dedication you will understand.

  It’s to be staged for the first time here in Milan, and it would give me the greatest pleasure if you could travel here and attend the first performance. It will be a glittering occasion, and you would be guests of honour.

  Whether you come or not, I want you to know that I am arranging for the proceeds from that performance to be sent to you for the education fund that you want to create.

  I was glad to hear that the other parcel I sent reached you safely. On the night before she died, the lady we knew as Sister Cecilia gave her diaries to a young novice called Anne-Marie – one of the two nuns who escaped from The Conciergerie. Anne-Marie later gave the diaries to me, and I knew they rightfully belonged to you, Gina. If you feel they could ever be made public in some form, somewhere in the future, I think that would be a very good thing.

  Cecilia talked to me during the journey to France – she told me about a great love she had known almost twenty years ago.

  ‘I expected him to repudiate me when I told him I was to have a child,’ she said. ‘I should have known him better. He arranged it so that the birth would happen in secrecy within the convent, and he arranged that his wife would visit cousins for a long stay, and return to Cresacre with a child. That satisfied her – I would not speak against her, and I will only say she was not a warm-natured or affectionate lady. To appear to have given him a child vindicated that for her. Mother Superior and Sister Agnes knew the truth. They never judged or admonished. Perhaps they had known that kind of love in their own lives, in their youth … They all lied for me, and they spun the deceit. Everyone kept the secret.’

  So there it is, my dearest Gina.

  With my best love to you,

  Cesare Chimaera

  Phin sat looking at this for a very long time, then he opened the opera manuscript. On the first page was a dedication:

  ‘To the memory of Ginevra – the lady who was known to Cresacre Convent and to the world as Sister Cecilia. And for her daughter, Gina Chandos.’

  Everyone in Cresacre turned out to attend the funeral of Olivia Tulliver. It was sad that the last of the family had gone, but the name would live on in the scholarship, of course.

  Miss Madeley and Miss Davy and all the teachers from the school were present, along with a good number of pupils who had known Olivia. Arabella Tallis was there, of course – a very lively girl she had been in her time. Everyone had liked her, though. She was with a young man who was supposed to have helped with part of the bicentenary work. It was nice to see people from the wider world coming to be part of the celebrations. Everyone was looking forward to the various events.

  After the service, somebody was heard to murmur that the local planners had already begun preparations for demolishing Infanger Cottage. A pity to lose such an old piece of Cresacre’s past, but the place had been tumbling down for years, of course. It would be good to have that bit of ground properly excavated.

  PRESS RELEASE

  Cresacre School are delighted to announce that the culmination of their bicentenary celebrations next month will be the performance of a recently discovered opera, written by a famous Italian singer from the eighteenth century, and composed by him as a memorial to the nuns who lived and worked at – and later vanished from – Cresacre Convent.

  The opera is a moving and atmospheric work, which details the remarkable story of a local half-French nun who travelled to France at the height of the French Revolution, and lost her life on the guillotine.

  The opera will be staged in the school grounds, and it will be a memorable occasion.

  The opera is titled Ginevra.