‘I don’t remember it at all.’
‘As I said, you were only four.’
‘What did I do, fill the bath to overflowing?’
Graham chuckled. My childhood misadventures were well known in the family, though fortunately they hadn’t followed me into adulthood. Well, not many of them. ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Anyway, as I said, we were staying at a guest house in Scarborough. Breakfast and evening meal, six o’clock on the dot or you went hungry. I suppose I’d have been eleven. Anyway, we had a room of our own, two single beds, adjoining Mum and Dad’s. They always kept the door ajar at night so they could keep a check on us. You slept like a log, and I hid under the sheets with a torch reading Sherlock Holmes. There was no telly, but they had a wireless in the lounge, and sometimes Mum and Dad would send you off to bed and let me stay up a bit later to listen to Appointment with Fear or Riders of the Range.
‘There was a huge wardrobe in our room. Oak or something. Very heavy and very old. The floors of the room were uneven, so if you didn’t turn the key, the wardrobe door would swing open slowly with a creaking sound. It used to scare the living daylights out of you. Inside the door was a full-sized mirror. You didn’t like that wardrobe at all, even when it was secured. Am I ringing any bells?’
‘I don’t remember any of it,’ I said, puzzled by Graham’s story. Was this four-year-old boy scared of a wardrobe really me? I began to feel that familiar chill of recognition, as if I not only knew what was coming but had experienced something similar recently, in the guest bedroom at Kilnsgate. It wasn’t quite déjà vu, but that was what it felt like, in a strange way. ‘Yes, but you know what it’s like when you’re kids,’ I argued. ‘You imagine monsters under the bed, in the cupboards, at the bottom of the garden, God knows where.’
‘Yes. Well, one day – it had been a hot one, I remember – and we’d been on the beach all afternoon. It was crowded. You were playing with your bucket and spade, building sandcastles, making friends with some of the other kids, going for a paddle occasionally – all under Dad’s eagle eye, of course – and I . . . well, I don’t know, really. I’d probably been reading a western or something, wishing I was off with my mates having adventures. But the point is, you were especially tired when we got back to the guest house. You could hardly stay awake through dinner. Mum and Dad packed you off to bed early, and we spent a while in the lounge listening to the wireless, Dad reading his paper. There weren’t many other guests, and most of them seemed to have wandered off to the pub, except for one old lady who sat nodding off in the armchair. And the woman who ran the place, of course – Mrs Gooch, I think she was called – cleaning up in the kitchen.
‘It must have been shortly after eight o’clock – there was some science-fiction serial I was following on the wireless, I remember – when we all heard this almighty crash and the sound of breaking glass and someone screaming – you screaming – from upstairs. Dad was first to his feet, I think, shortly followed by me. We dashed up the stairs two, three at a time, probably both of us with the same thought in our heads – the wardrobe had somehow come open or fallen over and some terrible accident had resulted, that maybe you were hurt.
‘Anyway, we ran into the room, me just behind Dad, and there you were, just standing there looking terrified, blood streaming from your hand. The curtains were closed, but they were made of thin material and it was still light outside, so the room wasn’t in complete darkness. The wardrobe door was swinging open and the mirror lay smashed in pieces all over the floor, as if someone had slammed the door shut too hard.’
‘Jesus!’ I said. ‘Was it me?’
‘You said it was an accident. We worked out that you must have been asleep and heard it creaking open, or had a bad dream or something, and got out of bed to shut it, but you slammed it too hard and the mirror broke.’
‘And?’
‘Well, nobody could think of any other explanation, though it must have been one hell of a push. I mean, you were only a little kid. We bandaged your hand and Dad took you to the hospital, where they stitched you up. Then Dad came back and calmed Mrs Gooch down – he knew he’d have to pay for the mirror, of course – and I think you slept in their room that night. Things were a bit frosty over breakfast the next couple of days, then we went home.’
‘I don’t remember any of this. And I don’t see—’
Graham held his hand up. ‘Wait. I haven’t finished yet.’
I felt a strange kind of tightness in my chest. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but I sensed that it was going to change things, make me feel differently about myself. I almost wanted to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t. Cecilia Bartoli was singing Panis Angelicus, and I took a deep breath and let the music calm me down.
Graham went on. ‘We also shared a room back home in Armley, remember? I think I was twelve or thirteen before we moved to the new estate and got a room each. Anyway, the first night back after the holiday, you couldn’t sleep. Your tossing and turning kept me awake. I asked what was wrong. That was when you told me what happened in Scarborough. You said that you got up to go to the toilet – I think you’d had far too much pop that afternoon – and you noticed that the door to the wardrobe was open. As you passed it to go out to the landing, you caught a glimpse of a reflection. There was something odd about it, you said, so you stepped back and stood in front of the mirror to see. It wasn’t you. That’s what you told me. You couldn’t see your own reflection but that of a young woman, and she seemed to be floating there, reaching out to you, calling you in, as if she wanted to tell you something. Drag you into the wardrobe mirror with her. That was when you slammed the door, out of pure terror, and the mirror smashed.’
I held my breath. A log shifted on the fire. Cecilia sang on.
‘You look pale, little brother. Have another sip of your cognac.’
I did as Graham suggested. I was starting to feel a little drunk.
‘I wasn’t trying to scare you,’ he went on. ‘I was only trying to tell you how you’ve always been over-imaginative, morbidly sensitive, that’s all, the same as with this Grace Fox business.’
‘Yeah, like you’re saying I see dead people. Is that it?’
Graham laughed. ‘Not quite. Maybe you’re sensitive to traces. I don’t know.’
‘Sounds like a load of bollocks to me, big brother,’ I said, with rather more bravado than I felt. ‘Did I tell you what she looked like, this woman?’
‘No. Just that she seemed young and sad. I think you might have mentioned that she was wearing a long nightie. Don’t worry, you weren’t having visions or premonitions of Grace Fox. That’s not why I’m telling you all this.’
‘Then why? What did you make of it?’
‘Well, naturally, I thought you’d awoken from a bad dream involving this young woman in distress, got out of bed half asleep, that somehow the door had come open and you saw your own reflection, maybe thought it was the monster coming out of the wardrobe, and you panicked.’
‘That would seem to be the logical conclusion,’ I said slowly, swirling the rest of my cognac in the large glass.
‘And that’s probably exactly what happened,’ Graham went on. ‘Except . . .’
I felt a sense of panic. ‘Except what?’
‘No, that’s probably exactly how it happened.’
‘Tell me,’ I pleaded. ‘You can’t lead me this far and then leave me stranded.’
‘It was just something I overheard Dad say later. I don’t think I was supposed to hear it.’
‘What?’
‘Well, the incident gave Mrs Gooch a hell of a shock. It wasn’t just the money. That’s basically what she was telling Dad the next day. But she had a daughter, and that used to be her room before her mother turned the place into a bed and board.’
‘So? There’s nothing odd about that. The daughter got married and left home, and her mother and father converted the house into a guest house rather than move to somewhere smaller. Makes sense. Sc
arborough attracts a lot of visitors.’
‘Yes. Only that wasn’t quite the way it happened.’
‘Oh?’
‘No. The daughter had a few problems. She was a highly strung girl. She got jilted by her fiancé, a soldier, and she . . . well, she hanged herself in that room. Naturally, Mrs Gooch would hardly tell her guests such a thing, but as I said, she was so upset by the mirror incident that she did let it slip to Dad. The wardrobe door was open at the time, and she saw the reflection of her daughter’s body in the mirror first, before she saw her actual daughter hanging there. What happened to you just brought it all back, that’s all.’
I could think of nothing to say. An icy sensation flooded through me. ‘So you believe that events leave traces?’
‘I never said that. I admit the whole thing puzzles me, and it would be very easy to grasp on to a supernatural explanation.’
‘Couldn’t I have heard about what happened before? Imagined it?’
‘It’s possible, but I don’t see how. You were only four. Even I didn’t really understand what I overheard, but it stuck in my memory. Years later, when I was at grammar school, I tracked down the story in the newspaper archive. It happened in 1945. It would appear, reading between the lines, that an American GI had got the girl pregnant, promised to marry her and take her back to Kansas or wherever with him, then he just abandoned her. She couldn’t face the shame, life without him . . . whatever, and she snapped.’
‘And that’s who you think I saw in the mirror? Her?’
‘There’s no way of knowing that,’ said Graham. ‘Maybe you imagined the whole thing in the half-darkness. Maybe it was the carry-over from a bad dream.’
‘Or places have memories and I can read them?’
‘Now you are being fanciful. I just don’t want all this Grace Fox business to drive you over the edge, that’s all I’m saying. You’re fragile enough already after the grief you’ve been through over Laura.’
That was exactly what Bernie Wilkins had said, and it annoyed me. ‘It’s not about the noises or the shadowy figures I sometimes think I glimpse,’ I said. ‘Or the piano I hear. They’re all exactly what you say they are, phantoms of an overworked imagination playing on the natural sounds and shadows in an old house. Special effects. It just happens that the house has a history and they heighten it, or vice versa. They don’t bother me at all. They just keep me awake sometimes. I’m not sleeping well.’
‘Most old houses have a history.’
‘Who knows? Maybe I am seeking something to distract me, a mystery to lose myself in. Maybe I am getting a bit obsessed. If I stand back and take stock of myself honestly, I find it hard to know how I got so drawn in, what my motives are, or how deeply I am in. I don’t know where it’s all heading, but I do want to know what happened. I’m not at all convinced, through what I’ve heard from Wilf Pelham and Sam Porter, that Grace Fox really did murder her husband. And even if she did, I want to know it for myself. Does that sound so weird?’
Graham sat up and put his empty glass down on the small round table beside his chair. ‘No, as long as that’s how it stays. You’ve got time on your hands. I wish you luck, little brother. Just don’t get too carried away with it, that’s all. I wouldn’t want you running amok and smashing up Kilnsgate House. Or this place, for that matter.’ He looked around at the farmhouse I knew he and Siobhan loved dearly. ‘This place has its history, too, you know, its memories. Not to mention its night noises.’
I smiled and stood up. ‘I’ll try not to let them drive me to destruction,’ I said. ‘Goodnight, Graham, and thanks for the cognac. And the story.’
Graham nodded. ‘See you in the morning.’
I was definitely feeling a little drunk as I made my way over the uneven stone flags to the creaky wooden stairs. Graham was right; this was an old house, and it no doubt had a few stories to tell of its own. I wasn’t in the mood for them tonight, though; all I wanted was sleep.
But, of course, sleep wouldn’t come. The room I was in was the one where I slept with Laura when we visited. The same bed. It felt much lonelier than the bed at Kilnsgate, in which I had never slept with anyone. Thoughts like this spiralled in my mind, the way they do when you’re a bit drunk, and began to turn into thoughts about the conversation I had just had with Graham.
I thought of taking out my iPod and listening to some soothing music, or to a story. I had an unabridged audio book of Far From the Madding Crowd that I was very much enjoying. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Graham’s story haunted me, though it still sounded very much like something that had happened to someone else. Still, the scar was there, on my hand, and sometimes it itched.
Had I really seen a young woman’s figure in the mirror and smashed the glass out of fear? Had it really been the image of a woman who had hanged herself in that very room several years earlier, or had I simply awoken from a bad dream and imagined it all? I didn’t know. And how could I ever know? It was the same with the figure I’d glimpsed in the wardrobe mirror at Kilnsgate. I’d put it down to a trick of the moonlight, but was it something else? Was it Grace? I hadn’t told Graham about it. I hadn’t told anyone. Why? Because I couldn’t explain it rationally? Because it would make them think I was going mad?
I trusted Graham. He had no reason to lie to me about something as momentous as this, but nobody could really know what happened in that room except me, and I couldn’t remember. My father was dead, so he couldn’t help me, and Mrs Gooch was no doubt long since departed, too. I supposed I could ask Mother and check the newspaper archives, as Graham himself had done later, but what was the point of that, if I believed him? It would only confirm the truth about the suicide, not that I had seen anything unusual in the mirror. Graham had told me everything I needed to know. Only through remembering could I be certain what happened that night.
All these questions circled in my mind like birds of prey while I tried to get to sleep. What did it all have to do with Grace Fox and Kilnsgate House? I wondered. I had thought it was my choice to become interested in Grace’s story, but was it? I remembered the sense I had had on first approaching Kilnsgate that the house was somehow waiting for me. Had I been pushed into my investigation by forces I didn’t understand? I found it hard to accept that powers beyond my own will were playing me like a puppet. It all seemed a bit too Don’t Look Now. Donald Sutherland thinks he sees his wife on the prow of a funeral boat in Venice when she’s supposed to be out of town, and it turns out to be his own funeral. He was psychic but he didn’t know it. Music by Pino Donaggio.
I heard creaking noises outside in the corridor, then realised that it was probably just Graham going to the toilet. A few moments later, I heard a flush and more creaking as he went back to his room. His story had got me edgy, and I found myself jumping at every little thing.
I pictured Grace again, and this time her image was calming. She appeared just as she did in one of Sam’s best portraits: pensive, distant, but still sensual and alluring, her mouth downturned slightly at the edges, eyes like midnight lakes you just wanted to plunge into and drown in, the tangle of waves framing her oval face, her shoulders pale and naked. I felt myself drifting towards sleep. Grace opened her arms to me. Then the image changed into Laura, the snowflakes melting on her cheeks, in her golden hair as she took off the fur hat, then it became someone else, someone I didn’t recognise. Perhaps the girl from the mirror. I could smell cocoa and hear the wind outside scraping some fallen leaves across the courtyard. The image in my mind started to say something to me but, mercifully, oblivion came at last.
10
Famous Trials: Grace Elizabeth Fox, April 1953, by Sir Charles Hamilton Morley
A pale Grace Fox appeared in the dock wearing a simple grey cardigan over a high-buttoned pearl blouse, her face free of make-up, her hair tied back in a tight bun. The austerity and severity of her appearance would be in marked contrast to the picture that Sir Archibald Yorke, QC, was about to paint of her for the jury. Gr
ace also seemed remarkably composed, or resigned, for a woman on trial for her life, and her expression, though drained of all colour and joy by the dim and airless character of the prison cell, rarely showed any signs of emotion.
Sir Archibald Yorke, QC, hitched his gown with a flourish, adjusted his wig, and set about his opening remarks, depicting Grace Fox in no uncertain terms as the deceitful, sexually profligate wife of an elderly unsuspecting country doctor. Finding her relationship with a penniless artist young enough to be her son threatened by a potential move out of the area, Grace took the dramatic step of putting an end to her husband’s life. This, Sir Archibald argued, she did with a great degree of cold-blooded cunning and premeditation. Not only did she have the necessary means at hand, but she also made certain that she had a house full of captive witnesses who, she hoped, would all be willing and able to appear in her defence, having participated to varying degrees in the charade she had planned for the night of 1st January, 1953. In his words, Grace Fox was ‘a very clever, manipulative, resourceful and evil woman’.
Grace knew full well that her husband suffered from stomach problems and was prone to heartburn and indigestion, especially after so rich and hearty a meal as they enjoyed on the evening in question. She also knew that this had never curbed his enthusiasm for food and drink, which she supplied in plenty. Though Hetty Larkin had prepared the dishes, she had done so under the full supervision and instructions of Mrs. Fox, who had provided her with both the menu and the receipts. Mrs. Fox knew that she needed witnesses in order to ensure that no blame fell on her, that her husband’s death appeared as if it had occurred from natural causes, and that it appeared as if she, as a trained nurse, had done everything within her powers to save him.
What Grace had, in fact, done, Sir Archibald contended, was adulterate her husband’s stomach powder with chloral hydrate, thereby sedating him, then returned to the dinner party and rejoined the unsuspecting convivial gaiety of the Lamberts. Later, when her guests and her servant had all retired for the night, Grace entered her husband’s room – they had been sleeping in separate bedrooms for some time now, Sir Archibald stressed – and injected Dr. Ernest Fox with enough potassium chloride to cause cardiac arrest.
Before the Poison Page 16