Northanger Abbey

by Val McDermid

  Although Cat and Ellie arrived in the drawing room a full five minutes ahead of the deadline, pink and panting from running down the corridor and stairs, the General was staring ostentatiously at the elegant grandmother clock in the corner. Henry was already there, done with devilling, sipping at what Cat fervently hoped was a Bloody Mary. ‘Just in time,’ the General said. Cat thought she heard a tinge of disappointment in his voice and scolded herself for the unworthy thought.

  As Mrs Calman served the soup, Cat drank in the details of the grand room. Everything gleamed and glittered with polished wood, silver and crystal. The table was easily big enough to seat a dozen or more, but it came nowhere near filling the space. Seeing her scrutiny, the General said, ‘You must be used to far grander dinners than this with your benefactors, the Allens?’

  Surprised, Cat shook her head. ‘No, not at all. The Allens don’t do much formal entertaining down in Dorset. We generally go round for kitchen suppers.’

  He nodded sagely. ‘I suppose there’s not much of a choice of guests down in that part of the country. Not like here in the Borders. It will be different with the Allens in London, I’d lay money on that. I’m sure that Mr Allen knows exactly what he’s doing when it comes to impressing people with his success.’

  Perplexed, Cat wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. She knew Mr Allen had to impress people with his instinct for theatrical successes, but she didn’t think he did it with ostentatious displays of wealth.

  ‘He’s certainly very successful,’ Henry said, seeing her uncertainty. ‘But not everyone feels the need to display their achievements materially.’

  The General raised his eyebrows in disbelief, his face growing pale with annoyance. ‘Then how are people to know where you have reached in the hierarchy of things? Sometimes, Henry, you sound almost like a socialist.’ He said the word as if it were the worst insult he could hurl across a dining table with ladies present.

  ‘I think people should live in the style that suits them best, so long as they can afford it,’ Cat said. ‘Not everyone has the good fortune to be able to live somewhere as wonderful as Northanger Abbey.’

  Mollified, the General grunted and finished his soup. When he was so brusque, Cat couldn’t help but think wistfully of the kindness and conviviality of the Allens. But when he left the young people to their own devices, Cat was as happy as she’d ever been. Thinking of the Allens reminded her that she had been unable to communicate with any of her nearest and dearest for almost a whole day.

  ‘General Tilney?’ She spoke with some diffidence as Mrs Calman cleared away the soup dishes and placed a selection of curries and side dishes in the middle of the table. ‘I wonder whether it might be possible for me to use your wifi?’ She caught the look of alarm shared by Henry and Ellie.

  ‘The wifi?’ The General frowned. ‘Is that entirely necessary?’

  ‘I wanted to check my email.’

  ‘My dear girl, why? Your parents and the Allens know precisely where you are and have the telephone number, so if there were any urgent need to contact you, there would be no difficulty.’ He spooned rice on to his plate and added some lamb methi. ‘You don’t have any kind of job yet, so there can be no urgent business communication awaiting you. In short, Catherine, there’s no conceivable reason other than the purely frivolous for you to “check your email”. Isn’t that so?’

  Cat was taken aback. Never before had an adult lectured her thus nor attempted to keep her from the constant to and fro of social media. ‘I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘So there is no need for me to make myself vulnerable to the phreaks and hackers out there who are just waiting for the chance to read my secure emails and plunder our bank accounts. There is no reason why you should be aware of this, but I receive communications that could conceivably be useful to the enemies of our country. We use the wifi sparingly here. I choose not to take risks with my security or the security of the nation.’ It was a virtuoso display of pomposity and self-importance thinly disguised by the General’s tone of regret.

  Chastened, Cat devoted herself to Mrs Calman’s curries, which were spicy enough to take her mind off any grievance against the General. Before dessert was served, he left the table, saying, ‘I have an MOD briefing to take a look at. Enjoy the rest of your meal. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  When he left the room, Henry said, ‘He still does consultancy work for the army. He’s very cautious about security.’

  ‘Paranoid, more like,’ Ellie muttered.

  After dinner, the trio retired upstairs to their sitting room and played a supremely silly game on one of the consoles, laughing and mocking each other’s efforts. The evening slipped by in an entertaining blur, and Cat couldn’t help thinking how well Henry and Ellie would fit in with the Morlands. Provided, of course, that she was mistaken about the whole vampire thing. Perhaps she’d discover more clues to help her make her mind up when she explored the mysterious japanned chest in her room.

  By the time they separated and went to bed, the night was stormy. The wind had been rising at intervals the entire afternoon, though Cat had failed to notice it. Now it howled in dramatic gusts, bringing noisy scatters of rain with it. It was awesome, Cat thought as she made her way down the long corridor to her room. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a particularly loud gust was followed by the distant slam of a door. It was impossible to escape the sensation of having been dropped into an episode of the Hebridean Harpies’ adventures. Northanger Nixies, perhaps, given how much water was pouring down her windows when she finally reached her room.

  Cat pulled the curtains closed but they didn’t stop moving when she stepped away from them. ‘It’s the wind,’ she said firmly. ‘Just the wind.’ To make doubly sure, she pulled each curtain swiftly back and checked the window seat. Then she put her hand up to the window and felt the damp draught where the ancient frames had warped enough to let the night in. ‘It’s the wind, you moron,’ she said to herself, letting the curtains fall.

  She eyed the chest, but, recognising the deliciousness of deferred pleasure, she decided to get ready for bed first. Then, with clean teeth and freshly laundered pyjamas, she approached the lustrous black chest. Cat gripped the edge of the lid and attempted to lift it. She was surprised by how cold and heavy it was until she realised it was made not from wood but from metal. She changed her grip and put more effort into it and this time she was rewarded with success. The lid rose and she rested it against the wall, careful not to make a sound. Not that it would have made any difference if she had, for by now the night’s peace was regularly broken by rumbles and claps of thunder as the storm took hold.

  To Cat’s disappointment, what was revealed was nothing more exotic than a hand-pieced quilt. It was true that the fabrics were of rich, jewelled colours, the pattern mathematically precise and intriguing and the stitches tiny and neat. But still, it was only a quilt. Cat drew it out of the chest and shook it out. It was big enough to act as a spread for a single bed. A hand-written label in one corner caught her eye and she pulled it close. ‘Margaret Tilney fecit 2001,’ she read. Cat, who had learned a little Latin from the memorial tablets in her father’s churches, thought ‘fecit’ meant ‘did’, which made a sort of sense. Margaret Tilney did it in 2001. She remembered Ellie that afternoon referring to her mother’s quilting. This must be one of her quilts. She was holding in her hands the very fabrics that the General’s dead wife had held. Her DNA was mingling with Henry’s mother’s even as she had the thought. Cat didn’t know whether to be spooked or gratified.

  She spread the quilt out on her bed then returned to her chest. She was surprised to see that the quilt was not the top item in a pile of bedding. Instead, it had sat in its own shallow drawer. She studied the chest again and realised it should now be possible to open the double doors at the front. She tugged at them, but they remained puzzlingly closed. She ran her hand along the inside of the drawer and her finger snagged on a metal hook almost flush with the wood.
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  Trepidatiously, Cat pushed the hook free of its fastening and at once the doors swung back, emitting the sort of creak that presages something blood-curdling in every vampire DVD she’d ever seen. Cat let out a little scream, but all that was revealed was a stack of six narrow drawers similar to the ones she’d seen in drapers’ shops in TV period dramas. She drew in her breath and pulled open the drawer below the quilt shelf.

  Eight white cotton pillowcases and a lavender bag. Cat breathed again.

  The drawers below held, variously, a pair of sheets, four cross-stitched cushion covers, three embroidered dressing-table runners, half a dozen silk scarves and a rusty red-brown stain that sent Cat’s heart into her throat.

  The stain was on the bottom of the last drawer, about the size and shape of a blade. The sort of stain you’d expect if someone had laid a bloody knife there. She made a small mewing sound in the back of her throat and recoiled from the chest.

  And yet, the streak of curiosity that ran through Cat as strongly as her blood itself could not keep from examining the piece of furniture. As her eye calibrated the dimension, she realised there was a gap beneath the bottom drawer of perhaps five or six centimetres. Could the answer to the bloodstain – for so she had already classified it without a waver of doubt – lie in the space beneath?

  Cat clenched her fists as if this would strengthen her resolve, then started to jiggle the drawer out of its runners. It was stiff and unwieldy towards the end, but she persisted, and almost fell backwards on to the floor when the drawer was finally released.

  The cavity that was revealed was difficult to examine because, unlike a drawer that could be pulled out, it was not easily accessible. By angling her head to one side, Cat could see there was a dark oblong at the back of the space, about the size of a book or a DVD box set. She tried to squeeze her hand into the gap, but she couldn’t insinuate her arm far enough to reach whatever it was.

  She stood up and fetched a hanger from the wardrobe then got down on the floor by the bottom of the chest. Using the hanger as a hook, she dragged the object towards her. When she realised it was indeed a book, her first sensation was one of disappointment. Still, she wasn’t about to give up her quest until her curiosity was satisfied. She reached for the volume. Her fingers told her it was flexible, bound in soft leather, with thin pages.

  Cat drew the book from its hiding place and stared at it, open-mouthed with astonishment. That it was a copy of the Bible was not in itself remarkable. What was remarkable, however, was what appeared to be a bullet hole in the top right-hand quadrant, a bullet hole that went right through to the back cover.

  Before she could open the book, there was a clap of thunder so loud and so close that Cat cried out in terror. The room was abruptly plunged into darkness and a second deafening thunderclap vibrated through the air. Cat curled into a ball and moaned softly. What terrible powers had her discovery unleashed?

  23

  Cat was surprised to wake up. If pressed, she’d have claimed she hadn’t slept a wink since she’d felt her way across the pitch-black room and clambered into her bed. She’d lain terrified in the darkness, reading all kinds of fresh terror into the strange sounds of house and storm interacting. At one point, she’d have sworn her door knob rattled fiercely, as if someone was determined to enter. But eventually, exhaustion had overcome anxiety and she had drifted off into the level of sleep only attainable by teenagers.

  ‘The Bible,’ she exclaimed as soon as she had swum far enough into consciousness to recall her adventures of the night before. She jumped out of bed and pulled the curtains open to reveal a bright morning had succeeded the tempest of the night before. In the sparkling sunlight, the Bible lying on the rug looked innocuous enough. Until she picked it up, half-convinced her imagination had run away with her. But in the light of day, it still looked like a bullet hole. It wasn’t a clean shot all the way through – it had barely torn a hole in the back cover – but Cat could think of nothing else that could have caused such an injury to the book. The density of the fine India paper must have been enough to stop the bullet.

  But who would shoot a Bible? And why? She couldn’t think of anything from her reading that would fit such a notion, unless it was a werewolf hunter with a silver bullet. But why would a werewolf be carrying a Bible for protection? It made no sense. And besides, Cat was pretty sure that if the Tilneys were anything, they were vampires. The clues and coincidences seemed to grow with every passing day. And the bloodstain on the drawer would seem to confirm that notion.

  She clasped the book to her chest and headed back to bed. She remembered a conversation she’d had with her father about vampires. He’d been adamant that there were no such creatures, that they were not part of God’s creation and she should stop reading about them. But she’d found a website that cited Bible verses to contradict her father’s position. She quickly flipped to her favourite. Revelation 16:6: ‘For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.’ When she’d run that one past him, he’d done that totally annoying thing of telling her she didn’t understand what she was reading. Why couldn’t he just admit he’d lost the argument?

  Cat closed the Bible again, then, on impulse, opened the cover. Her heart jumped in her chest as she realised what she was looking at. There, in ink faded more than a dozen shades, was a list of births, marriages and deaths. The first date was 1713 and the last was 1878. The family name that ran through the records was Tilney. The Christian name of the oldest son of every generation was Henry. And unusually, those first-born Tilneys seemed always to have made it to adulthood and families of their own. How likely was that, Cat wondered.

  Unless of course there was only one and he was a vampire.

  What also made no sense was that, in this generation, Henry was the younger son. Unless, because of the reckless choices made by Freddie over the years, Henry just looked younger. Who knew how much attrition two hundred years of hard living might produce?

  She shivered at the thought. ‘You’re losing it, Catherine Morland,’ she said. She climbed out of bed again and tucked the book away at the bottom of her bag. She knew she should ask Ellie or Henry about it, but she wasn’t willing to go there yet. Just in case her crazy idea was right. And then they would have to kill her, she supposed.

  She was about to get ready to go downstairs when she realised she’d been so excited by her discovery the night before that she hadn’t bothered to replace the drawer she’d had to jiggle out of the cabinet in order to reach the cavity beneath. With sinking heart, it dawned on her that she had to put it back or risk the most embarrassing kind of discovery.

  Cat knelt on the floor and picked up the drawer, shivering at the sight of the elongated triangle of rusty brown stain. She wrestled it into place, as she thought, but after a few inches, it jammed. She pulled it back and this time she tried to ease it in more gently. But again it seemed to stick on the runners.

  ‘Soap,’ she exclaimed, jumping up and retrieving the soap from the bathroom basin. She rubbed the runners with it, then for good measure, ran it up the sides of the drawer. This time, it went in almost all the way. Almost, but not quite. What was worse was that it wouldn’t come out again either. It was rock solid, not budging a fraction.

  Cat, who had been brought up with propriety, allowed herself to swear as volubly as she’d heard the Thorpe girls curse. It made no difference, however. Finally, she tried to force it home by closing the front doors of the cabinet. But it was hopeless. They wouldn’t quite meet.

  She glanced at the clock and realised she couldn’t afford to waste any more time. She’d have to leave it for now and hope that neither Ellie nor Mrs Calman came in before she could fix it. Quickly she showered and dressed and hurried down to breakfast, head still buzzing with strange fancies and increasingly unlikely explanations for the Bible with the bullet hole. She found Henry alone at the table, eating toast and drinking tea.

  ‘Morning, Cat,�
� he said, looking up from the bundle of papers beside his plate. ‘I hope the storm didn’t keep you awake? This place is so old, it creaks and rattles like a galleon under sail when we get a bad storm. We’re used to it, but I imagine it must have been pretty unsettling for you?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said airily. ‘I soon got used to it.’ Desperate to move the conversation away from the events of the night in case she gave herself away, Cat cast about for another subject. ‘What a beautiful flower arrangement,’ she said, waving a hand at a tall vase of extravagantly coloured gladioli.

  ‘Ellie brought them in from the garden this morning. She’s good with flowers.’

  ‘What kind are they?’

  ‘Gladioli.’

  Cat grinned. ‘My first accomplishment of the day. I have learned to love a gladioli.’

  ‘Gladiolus, if you want to be precise,’ Henry said, mocking his own pedantry with a raised eyebrow. ‘Gladioli is the plural. I’m surprised you don’t know the names of all our British flora. I thought that’s what young ladies were supposed to have at their fingertips?’

  ‘Ha, ha.’ Cat poured herself a cup of tea and sat at right angles to Henry.

  ‘It’s good for you to have a hobby. Gets you out in the fresh air.’

  ‘Trust me, Henry, I don’t need excuses to get out of doors. I love walking. I don’t even need the dog for an excuse.’

  ‘So . . . wouldn’t it be an even richer experience if you knew what you were looking at?’

  ‘I know the trees and the wildflowers, clever clogs. Just not all the cultivated ones.’

  He made a shallow bow. ‘I sit corrected. But it’s good that today you learned to love a gladiolus. The habit of loving is definitely one to be cultivated.’

  Before she could respond, the General marched in. ‘Are you still here?’ he said. Happily for Cat, it was clear he was addressing his son.