Ghost Song

by Rayne, Sarah

  Still, Shona supposed they might as well have a few photographs of the day if it would please silly old Elspeth who had found a camera from somewhere and bought a roll of film in the village. She went up to the attic just after lunch.

  The photograph albums were not immediately visible, but then nothing was immediately visible because people seemed to have dumped all the household rubbish up here and forgotten it. Shona had brought a torch with her and began to sift through the larger packing cases, which were the likeliest places.

  The albums—four of them—were finally found in a small suitcase which might once have accompanied some forgotten Seymour or Ross ancestor on weekend holidays. Shona lifted them out, flicking off most of the dust in the process, and then thought it was a shame to leave the suitcase up here; it was old, but it was a good leather case. She had not actually travelled beyond Moil since the long-ago half-term holidays at Whitby, but now she was eighteen she might soon be able to go off to live somewhere livelier, so a good suitcase would be very handy. She scooped out a few ancient magazines and some old sixties-type hair rollers that had unaccountably got inside, and as she did so a handful of clipped-together papers fell out of one of the pockets.

  At first sight they did not look very important or interesting: they were most likely forgotten, semi-official notifications of something or other. Shona picked them up, intending to take them downstairs with the albums and burn them. It would be one less bit of useless rubbish up here.

  At the head of the top sheet of paper were the printed words, Thornacre Asylum for the Criminally Insane. County of Yorkshire.

  The address directly under this was vaguely familiar as being somewhere in North Yorkshire near the east coast, and the date was two years after Shona’s own birth.

  Shona stared at these words for quite a long time. She had been kneeling on the bare floor, but she suddenly felt as if she might topple forward, so she sat back, leaning against an old chair. Thornacre Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It was probably nothing to do with anyone now living at Grith. It was most likely an appeal for a donation or something of that kind. But odd words had already leapt up at her. Sudden death. Distress. Iain Seymour. Iain Seymour. SEYMOUR.

  It was probably better not to read the letter. It was probably better not to know what it said. Or was it? Wouldn’t she always wonder? Iain Seymour…

  She took a deep breath and with the feeling of stepping neck deep into black swirling water, began to read the typed lines.

  Dear Mrs Seymour

  It is with deep regret that I have to inform you of the sudden death of your husband, Iain Alistair Seymour, yesterday (12th) at this institution.

  I know this news will cause you considerable distress, and I am sorry that I must add to that distress by having to tell you that he died during a violent attack on one of our attendants here. The man is recovering, but is still gravely ill and I believe there are fears for the sight of one of his eyes.

  There must, of course, be an inquest and also an official Home Office inquiry, so at this stage I am only able to give you the most basic details.

  It seems that during the attack it was necessary to restrain Iain Seymour very forcibly. However, he broke away from the attendants holding him and threw himself down a flight of steel steps. His neck was broken in the fall and he died immediately.

  As you know, it was unlikely that your husband would ever have been released from Thornacre, although during the eighteen months he was here I and my psychiatric team did all we could to reach him—sadly with no success. He was a sullen and withdrawn resident for all of his stay. In view of that, I feel your decision not to visit him was a wise one, and perhaps you will find some comfort in knowing it now seems unlikely that your small daughter can ever discover her father’s identity. I cannot think any useful purpose would be served by her knowing and, as you are aware, I was always firmly in agreement with your decision not to tell her—a decision I believe was supported by your own father at the time.

  I will let you know the arrangements for the funeral when they are made, and if you decide to travel up here to attend it, I could arrange accommodation at a nearby hotel, together with whatever transport you might need.

  The interment will be carried out privately within the precincts of Thornacre itself and the press will not be told of the date. I cannot absolutely guarantee anonymity for you if you decide to come to the funeral, but I think you can be reasonably sure no one would connect you to Iain Seymour in any way.

  Again, my sincerest condolences, and if there is any help I can give at this most difficult time, I hope you will not hesitate to let me know.

  Yours sincerely

  F. G. Hamilton

  Head of Psychiatric Medicine for HM Prisons Thornacre

  Stapled to the letter was a newspaper cutting, yellowed and brittle with age. The date was two days after the letter.

  DEATH OF NOTORIOUS SERIAL KILLER

  The famous ‘Tantallon’ murderer, Iain Seymour, yesterday met his death in Thornacre Asylum, where he has been a patient for the last eighteen months.

  It is understood that Seymour (30), was involved in an attack on two of the orderlies in the asylum, which, like Broadmoor, caters solely for the criminally insane. Home Office sources said a full statement would be released in the course of the next 48 hours, but confirmed that Seymour had died in a fall down some iron steps. An inquiry is to be held.

  Two years ago Iain Seymour was convicted of the killings of four young girls, but was never sentenced due to his mental condition. He is the son of Scottish wine merchants, but other than that, little was ever disclosed about his background. At his trial he appeared to have no close relatives and was accompanied only by his defence counsel.

  His motives were, it was believed, wholly sexual—all the girls had been raped before death and the police case was that Seymour had killed them to prevent them reporting the rapes.

  During his reign of terror, Iain Seymour came to be known as the Tantallon Killer, due to his custom of burying the bodies of his victims near to the ruinous Tantallon castle in North Berwick.

  Tantallon castle is steeped in Scottish and English history. It stands on a rocky headland surrounded by cliffs, and in its heyday, boasted one of the most spectacular mediaeval curtain walls—12 feet in thickness—ever constructed. This curtain wall can still be clearly seen, even today, and one of the macabre aspects of Seymour’s killings was that he would apparently take his victims to see this curtain wall by moonlight, before raping, then strangling them and burying their bodies on the lonely clifftop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE DIM ATTIC WAS SO quiet it might have been plucked out of the house—out of England—and set down on some silent dead world. Fragments of conversation—of questions and of evasive answers—whirled in Shona’s head, like a child’s kaleidoscope.

  ‘Why haven’t I got a father? Everyone at school has one?’ ‘Your father’s long since dead. Don’t keep talking about it.’ That had been her mother, lips drawn tightly in, the shuttered look in her eyes. Shona had tried elsewhere to find out. ‘Grandfather, it’d be nice if I had a father on sports days at school. For the fathers’ races and things.’ And her grandfather’s reply, a little sharp: ‘We can’t always have the things we want in life, Shona. I hope you don’t pester your mother with these questions.’

  And all the time, her father had been this monster, this killer who had been so insane and so dangerous he had been shut away. Convicted of killing four young girls… Raped, then strangled them so they couldn’t tell… STRANGLED THEM…

  The half-open suitcase was still lying on the floor next to her and Shona suddenly saw how her mother must have packed this case with overnight things, tucked F. G. Hamilton’s letter into it along with the newspaper cutting, and travelled to Thornacre to attend the funeral of the man who had murdered young girls in the shadow of Tantallon’s curtain wall. It was curious how that term, curtain wall, imparted a theatrical flavour.<
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  Had people at Moil known who her father was and who old Mr Ross’s daughter had married all those years ago? Shona thought it unlikely: Seymour was not an uncommon name and it sounded as if the marriage had not been of very long duration. Her mother must have returned to Grith House, and probably she and Grandfather had spun some story about her being tragically widowed and no one had made the connection.

  Shona had sometimes woven little daydreams about her father—about how he might have died a heroic death, rescuing someone from a burning building or a sinking ship. Later, seeing these images did not really square with Mother’s tight-lipped secrecy or Grandfather’s strict injunction not to pester her with questions, she had adjusted the vision. Perhaps her father had been one of the glamorous gentlemen spies in the Cold War—a James Bond character who had died for his country, but whose selfless contribution to it could never be acknowledged. This was a fairly satisfying image, although as Shona grew up, the daydreams blurred and then dissolved, and by the time she was thirteen or fourteen, divorce had become much more common—even in Moil—so that not having a father was no longer particularly unusual.

  It was still just possible she had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but it was necessary to know for certain.

  Forgetting about the photograph albums, Shona went back downstairs in a dream, the Thornacre letter and newspaper cutting in her hand. Elspeth was in the garden, but her mother was in the sitting room. It was early afternoon: a time when she would be about halfway to insensibility but able to understand and respond.

  Shona did not bother with preambles or with working delicately round to the question. She thrust the letter into her mother’s hand, and said, ‘Is this true? Was my father a murderer? Was he shut away in an asylum?’

  At first she thought her mother had not heard her, then she thought she had not understood. But at last, Margaret Seymour said, in a helpless defeated voice, ‘You were never meant to know. You were to be always protected.’

  Shona had to sit down very abruptly in case she fell down. She said, ‘It’s true?’

  ‘Oh yes. We hushed it up, of course.’ A vestige of the old Margaret Seymour showed briefly—the woman who had cared about respectability and who had valued her modest standing in the small community of Moil. ‘No one was ever allowed to find out the truth,’ she said. ‘I came back to Grith as soon as—as soon as I knew what he was. We let it be thought I was a widow.’

  It was more or less as Shona had guessed.

  ‘Father was so good—you can have no idea how good he was to me, Shona. To both of us. Protecting you—that was all that seemed to matter.’ The blurred eyes sharpened suddenly as if she had brought the world into focus for the first time for months. ‘And we did protect you,’ she said. ‘Father and I and, later, Elspeth. We lied and pretended and we guarded you. We knew, you see, what you did that day.’

  Shona said, ‘I don’t understand. Protecting me from what? From my father?’

  Margaret Seymour said, ‘From the consequences of your own actions, Shona.’ She looked at her, then said, ‘When you were eight years old, Shona—we all knew what you did, you see—we all knew you killed Anna.’

  For a very long time neither of them spoke. Shona stared at the dishevelled figure in the chair, and as she did so, the sudden agonizing pain came in her head—the pain that split her head into two halves and opened up the deep chasm. From out of this chasm a hot scalding flood of emotion came spewing up, and within it were the memories and the knowledge of what had happened all those years ago. The terrible words lay on the air— We all knew you killed Anna. They had known—they had all known!—while Shona herself had not known at all. But now there it lay, the clear memory of that night when she had been eight years old, and had decided to kill Anna.

  Her bedtime in those days was eight o’clock because she was still only eight herself, although Edna Cheesewright said she was growing up faster than any of them could keep track of. When Shona reminded Edna that she was almost nine, and that next year she would be in double figures, Edna said, my goodness me, and supposed there would be a birthday party, and she and Mona baking a cake.

  It was autumn; Grith smelt of woodsmoke from the open fire. Shona had gone to bed as usual, but had lain awake, staring up at the ceiling, wishing she had brought a drink or some biscuits with her. She was not supposed to eat anything after she had cleaned her teeth, but the more she thought about biscuits—some of Mona Cheesewright’s fudgy biscuits baked that very day—the more she wanted them. She looked at the little bedside clock. It was a nice clock with a smiley face and hands in the shape of a curly moustache, and the moustache ends showed it was ten minutes past nine.

  Mother and Grandfather would be watching the television news, and it ought to be possible to creep downstairs and do what Mona Cheesewright called snaffle a handful of the fudge biscuits, and be back upstairs without anyone knowing. She might take a glass of orange juice as well if she could manage it quietly. She would like Coke or Pepsi like other people had, but Grandfather said they were rubbishy teeth-rotting drinks. Still, she could have a pretty good private midnight feast with orange juice and biscuits. Shona often felt jealous when people at school stayed with each other overnight, perhaps after a birthday party or even for a whole weekend; they usually came back giggling about secret midnight feasts, and if there were brothers, the brothers had generally joined in and it had all got a bit rowdy. Rowdy or not, Shona wished she could have school friends to stay at Grith so they could have secret midnight feasts and giggle the next day at school. But her mother had not thought it a very good idea. Best with just the four of them, she said. Shona, her mother, Anna and Grandfather. A nice family party. In any case, Shona’s grandfather did not like a lot of noisy children laughing and screeching all over the house.

  No one would hear if Shona tiptoed down to the kitchen, although she would have to step round the floor-boards in the hall that creaked so loudly. The Cheesewrights were always going to get their cousin who was a joiner to come along and do a little job on the floorboards, but Grandfather said there was no money for little jobs and in any case the Cheesewrights’ cousin drank and chased women and he was not having him in the house.

  Shona avoided the creaking floorboards and went along the hall. It did not sound as if the television was on after all, which was quite unusual at this time of the evening. When she stopped outside the door to listen, she heard Grandfather and Mother talking.

  ‘She does behave so well,’ mother was saying. ‘Don’t you think so? There’s really no sign at all of—’

  ‘I see signs,’ Grandfather said. ‘Margaret, I’m sorry, but I see them very clearly.’

  ‘You watch her, I know.’ Mother sounded as if she was going to cry.

  ‘I’ll always watch her. I’ll always stay close. She doesn’t realize it and I don’t let her know, but I do. So do you. And I see that look occasionally.’

  I see that look. A log must have fallen apart in the hearth just then, because the firelight in the room suddenly became red and Shona felt frightened.

  ‘Ah, Margaret, don’t cry,’ her grandfather was saying, and there was the creak of his chair as if he had leaned forward to pat Mother’s arm or take her hand. ‘You know what I mean. We’ve both seen that look.’

  Mother’s voice came in a whisper. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes. But she’s all right, isn’t she? We’re making her all right.’

  ‘We are now, but what’s to do when I’m gone?’ he said. ‘I worry you won’t manage to control her, and that’s what I wanted to say to you tonight. We have to face facts, my dear: I’m well beyond the three score years and ten already, we both know that. So what I’ve thought is this. You’ll remember Elspeth, your cousin John’s eldest?’

  ‘I think so. Yes, of course I remember her.’

  ‘I’ve a mind to write to her, outlining the situation. Not making any definite arrangements, just saying there could be a time in the future when you’d be glad of her help h
ere. You can offer her a good home—she’s no place of her own—and there’d be a little money by way of a wage, I’d make sure of that.’ There was a pause and Shona had the impression of her mother frowning as if thinking this over.

  ‘She’s a strong sense of family,’ said Grandfather. ‘We can trust her with the truth.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mother. ‘Yes, that would be an answer for—for later, wouldn’t it? Yes, write the letter, would you?’ She was crying properly now, and Shona heard her grandfather cross the room and then the chink of glasses.

  ‘Thank you,’ said her mother after a moment and Shona guessed he had given her some brandy or whisky. ‘You’re so good to me, Father. I’m sorry to be so emotional.’

  ‘Natural you should get upset,’ said Grandfather a bit gruffly. ‘It’s a bad business and it always has been, but it’s not your fault—if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I should have seen— I should have done something all those years ago. But the truth is that we were all fooled by a charming monster.’

  A charming monster… Shona felt the hairs on her arms prickle all the way down to her hands.

  ‘It seems so cruel,’ her mother was saying. ‘Not letting her lead a normal life. That’s what upsets me most.’

  ‘Her life’s normal enough it seems to me,’ said Grandfather and there was a sudden stern note in his voice that Shona did not quite understand. ‘It’s as normal as we dare let it be.’ Then, sounding as if he was making an effort to throw off a heavy weight, he said, ‘And now, shall we take a look at the television news?’ and there was the sound of the TV being switched on, and the announcer’s voice talking about some boring old war somewhere, and something called Watergate, which Grandfather listened to, and then said they might attach all the fanciful names they liked to this: to his mind this Watergate business was nothing but downright greed and deceit.