by Sarah Rayne
It is understood that Madame Acton, released from her ordeal, will remain in Acton House for a short time only, after which the house will be closed and she will travel abroad for an indefinite period.
Nell put the sheaf of papers on the bedside table, switched off the light, and lay down.
The Not Guilty verdict was surprising. She had assumed that Isobel’s place on the gallows was assured. But Samuel Burlap had only been twelve when it happened, and he might have misunderstood what he had seen. Also he had been relating the story many years after it happened. He had not given evidence at the trial, so no one had realized he had seen anything of any significance. It had probably not occurred to anyone to even question him.
How much of the truth had Mrs Burlap known though? Had she simply not seen what had really happened that afternoon, or was she too intimated by the Acton family to speak out against Isobel? Nell did not think Mrs Burlap had sounded a person who could be intimated by anything, but people did not always act as you expected.
And how did all of this tie up with Esmond, who, according to Burlap, had known the secrets?
TWELVE
Michael’s journey to Caudle Moor had turned out to be fairly straightforward.
He played some tapes which the Music Director had loaned him after their discussion about the book on poets and music. Berlioz’s Second Symphony, apparently inspired by Byron’s epic poem, Childe Harold, took him as far as Coventry, and he followed this with an overture which Berlioz had written after seeing a performance of The Tempest. By this time he was at Bakewell, and he remembered that Nell had phoned from here yesterday morning. With this in mind he pulled into a roadside service station and tried her number again. Still nothing.
Berlioz had wound himself down to the splendid finale of his overture, and Michael switched to the car radio for the last lap of the journey. He was rather pleased that he had not taken any wrong turnings, although he suspected he might have to ask for directions to Stilter House when he reached Caudle itself. If he reached Caudle.
But he did reach it. It was half-past ten when he got there, but there was a fairly well-lit road, with a scattering of small houses and a sign saying this was Caudle Moor, visitors were welcome and please to drive carefully. There was no one about and Michael thought if he could not find Gorsty Lane, he would pull in at The Pheasant, a little further along and ask for directions.
But he found the lane almost at once. The sign was partly hidden by overhanging trees and greenery, but it was readable in the car headlights. Michael swung the car over.
Gorsty Lane was narrow and winding, but there did not seem to be any houses anywhere. Michael drove on, seeing only fields and trees, beginning to feel as if he had fallen into a dark half-world in which there were only the unlit roads and sodden trees, and the rippling rain on the windscreen.
Then without warning the house was there, a dark silent shape rearing out of the sodden twilight, silhouetted blackly against the night sky. The legend Stilter House was on the gate, but everywhere was dark. Michael glanced at the dashboard clock. Twenty minutes to eleven. Beth would have been in bed long since, but it was a bit early for Nell, although if there was no electricity on she might have gone to bed with a book and be reading by candlelight. He drove through the gate, and parked near the house. Nell’s car was not in sight, but perhaps it was around the other side, or there might be a garage somewhere.
Now he was closer to it, he did not like the house very much. There was a sullen greyness that was not entirely due to the recent rain or the stone walls. And yet this, reportedly, was the place to which Brad West had come for several summers, loving spending his holidays here, always keen to return. Because of Esmond, had that been? Michael reminded himself that Stilter House would have looked very different twenty-five years ago, and that Charlotte West might have filled it with local children, with whom Brad had formed friendships.
Only the one friendship in this place, only ever the one . . . The words whispered on the air like ragged cobwebs, wistful and lonely, and Michael spun round, peering into the dark garden. But there was only the patter of the rain and the blurred breath of the night wind.
He turned up his coat collar and crossed to the front door, then paused. Planning this journey, he had visualized a house with signs of life, and Nell hearing his car and coming out to meet him. But if she was in bed – maybe even asleep – it would certainly alarm her to hear someone knocking on the door.
He walked cautiously round the side of the house, hoping there might be lights at the back. The gravel crunched under his feet with faint wet squelches. If you wanted to be fanciful, you might even think there was an echo – that someone trod in the wet gravel after you. Michael spun round, but there was nothing to see. It was simply that the gravel was sodden and it was displacing as he walked on it, then settling back into place.
The back of the house was in pitch darkness. Michael stood on what seemed to be the remains of a terrace with steps leading down to an overgrown lawn, and stared up at the blank windows. He was just making up his mind to go back to the front door and knock after all, when there was a movement within the shadowy garden. A figure ran across the grass and vanished between the trees. An animal? No, it had been human-shaped.
The sensible action, if you happened to find yourself in a dark old garden with the ghost-tales of former occupants threading through your mind and vague shapes flitting across the terrain, was to make sure the house’s occupants were safe, then go for help, after which a search for possible intruders could be made. If said intruder got away during these preliminaries, that was your bad luck and the intruder’s good, but it was still the sensible course of action.
What you did not do – what no one in his right mind would do – was go in instant pursuit of the amorphous figure.
Michael cast a glance at the unlit bulk of Stilter House again, gave the equivalent of a mental shrug, and went in pursuit of the amorphous figure.
It had vanished somewhere within the trees and it was towards them that Michael ran, skidding slightly on the wet grass. The damp scents of moss clung everywhere, and the garden, leeched of colour by the night, was a grey-green mistiness. Beyond the trees was a small block of outbuildings, low roofed and half covered with thick mats of ivy.
This is starting to be unreal, thought Michael, pausing to consider his next move. It’s as if I’ve fallen backwards into somebody’s elegy, because this is the grey, glimmering landscape with the ivy-mantled tower if ever there was one. But who – or even what? – did I see a few minutes ago? Was it the beckoning ghost in the gloaming light, luring me to God-knows what fate? Or was it Shelley’s pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift? Never on your life, he thought, kicking his mind back to reality. Those kind of apparitions don’t exist outside the gothic imagination of the romantic poets. Anything supernatural I see out here, will more likely be a cartoon ghost swathed in a bunch of laundry sheets, and if it’s clanking chains as well, it’ll have purloined them from an old lavatory cistern.
This skewed logic made him feel so much better it occurred to him that he had probably seen nothing more macabre than a local on the way back from The Pheasant, taking a short cut and not realizing anyone was in Stilter House’s grounds. Michael banished all thoughts of draggled wraiths or laundry-sheet winos, and resolved to check the ivy-mantled tower for down-to-earth trespassers before going back to the house to wake Nell. A stray trespasser would long since have fled, and even if he had not, he was not likely to be violent. In any case Michael could pelt back to the house or his car if anything menacing came boiling out of the shrubbery.
He had just stepped out of the sketchy protection of the pear tree when through the moss-scented night, came the sound of piano music, light and fragile, but unmistakable. In the same breath-space, a thin smeary light flared at the far end of the outbuildings.
It was an extraordinary moment; it was almost as if the music had ignited something deep within the dark old stones. Mic
hael stopped dead. Should he go back to the house to trace the music to its source or should he go on, and investigate the glimmering light? But music was a normal, unthreatening thing and it might be coming from anywhere. The light was different; it looked as if it might be the start of a fire and those old buildings could go up like matchwood. Michael thought he would take a quick look and if it was a fire he would dash back to the car for his mobile and hope there was a signal. If not he would bang on the doors of Stilter House, get Nell and Beth out, and drive hell-for-leather to the village to summon the fire brigade.
The ramshackle outbuildings looked considerably older than Stilter House. Even in the dimness he could see that the bricks were crumbling, and the roofline sagged. He could still make out the thin light, but there was no ominous smell of smoke or warning crackle of flames, just the scent of wet leaves and grass. The only sound was the cool clear music tapping against the darkness. A corner of his mind registered vague surprise that he was still hearing it, this far from the house.
There were two – no, three – doors on the front of the outbuildings, as if there might be three separate structures. Two doors were shut and half hidden by the ivy, but the third had swung inward a little way. Scaled-down version of Bluebeard’s chamber, thought Michael, wryly. Let’s hope that room isn’t the one with the stored-away corpses of discarded wives. Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s a coal house or an ancient earth closet, that’s all! But it’s where the light’s coming from, so I’d better make sure the trespasser didn’t drop a lit cigarette or that no wailing shades caught their shirt-tails in the smouldering embers.
Reducing the slightly sinister situation to these vaguely comic proportions reassured him again, and he went up to the half-open door, and called out.
‘Hello? Is anyone here?’ His voice echoed in the emptiness, and bounced mockingly back at him.
Anyone here . . . anyone here . . .?
And what would I do, thought Michael, if a clotted voice came trickling out of the shadows, and a hoarse whisper said, ‘Yes, I’m here – push the door wider and step inside, my dear . . .’ Don’t be melodramatic, said his mind crossly.
He stepped inside, and sour dead air gusted into his face. It would be animal droppings and decaying vegetation, but it was repulsive, nonetheless. Directly ahead was an inner door which was closed, but the light was coming from beyond it – Michael could see the glow through a small aperture near the top. If it was a fire, at least it seemed to be contained in the inner room, and it looked so small it could probably be doused with a bucket of water.
He turned to go back out, intending to wake Nell and get water from the house, but as he did so, the outer door swung forward and closed with a rusty finality.
Michael dived to it at once, not panicking, because there was nothing to panic about. The door had simply swung closed because of its sagging hinges, that was all, or a gust of wind had blown it. He had only to open the door and step outside . . .
The door opened inwards – it had to be pulled not pushed. That merely meant he had to find the handle. It was not completely dark in here, but the door was in deep shadow, and Michael felt all the way round the frame. It took sixty seconds for him to realize there was no handle on this side. The inside of the door was smooth, virtually seamless, and it was wedged tight into its frame.
He swore and felt round it again, this time searching for a knot-hole or a warped piece of wood he could use to pull the door open. Nothing. He was still not panicking, but he was becoming worried. He would get out, of course, even if he had to smash his way through the door. It was an old one anyway and the hinges were rusting – he had felt the rough edges of them on the frame. It would not take much to snap them off and get the door open. And even if that failed, there would be a window somewhere, or another way out.
Another way out . . .
He turned to look at the inner door. The light still glowed behind it, and the aperture was actually a small grille – a square window with thin vertical bars. Halfway down the door frame was an immense iron bolt, and near the top was a second one. Both were drawn across so that anything on the other side would be shut in. As if the thought gave substance to something that waited in the darkness, thin hands with impossible, bone-pale fingers, curled around the bars of the grille. A face looked out at him between the bars.
Michael fell back, banging his shoulder hard against the outer door, but hardly noticing the jab of pain. His mind was filled with horror, because there was someone in there – someone who had been shut in there, and the fearsome bolt drawn. A woman – yes, the eyes were a woman’s eyes, large and dark, and there was the impression of dark hair, unkempt and stringy. But there was something wrong about the woman’s face, something dreadfully wrong, only he could not make out what it was, because the clotted shadows were obscuring part of the features, and thick cobwebs clung everywhere – they dripped from the woman’s fingers like sticky strings. But it was her eyes that held him – terrible, beseeching eyes, eyes that said, Let me out, please, oh please, let me out . . .
He scrambled to his feet and went forward, intending to draw back the bolts, calling out to her as he moved. But even as his words echoed in the enclosed space, there was a blurred movement from beyond the grille. The uncertain light shut off, and thick, bad-smelling darkness rushed at him like a blow.
For several minutes Michael was completely disoriented. He had been facing the inner door, but the sudden loss of sight – the silent quality of the darkness – threw him. He stood very still, then turned his head and managed to make out the thread of light coming from beyond the main door. He was just trying to decide whether he should try to get to the bolted door, or whether he should make a renewed attempt to get outside, when he became aware that someone was standing very close to him. Someone who was breathing very quietly and lightly. Something brushed against him – hands? The edge of a garment? His heart bumped with panic, because there was someone in here with him. Was it the hollow-eyed creature shut away in the inner room? Could she have got out after all and be standing close to him?
Whoever this was seemed to be standing between Michael and the outer door – he could just make out a dark blurred shadow. Male? Female? The thought of a tussle in the pitch dark was so daunting that Michael backed away to the bolted door with the grille and, tying to keep his eyes on the shadowy shape, he fumbled for the nearer of the two bolts. It resisted at first, then slid back with a screech of sound, and his hands felt for the second one. That, too, stuck, then yielded.
The shadow seemed to flinch at the sounds and Michael pushed the inner door open. He had no idea what would happen, but surely the freed woman would be on his side if it came to a fight.
The inner room was empty. Faint threads of light slanted down from where the roof had partly fallen in – more than sufficient light to see that there was no one here. Or was there? Michael looked uneasily into the corners. Did the crouching shadows hide something? But his eyes were adjusting to the dimness now, and he could see that there was nowhere for anyone to hide. But I saw her, he thought, puzzled.
This room was somewhat larger than the outer one. It had stone walls, and it was just possible to see a rotting table and chair pushed against the far wall. A length of old chain lay beneath the table, thickly covered with dust and grime. Could that be used as a weapon in the event of an attack?
It might be possible to break out through the damaged roof, but not without a noisy struggle. And Michael was not going to stay in a room where the door could be slammed and bolted from the outside. Moving as quickly as he could in the dimness, he went back to the outer room. And this time he knew, in the indefinable way the human brain does know, that there was no one here except himself. Whoever or whatever had stood watching from the door had gone. He drew in a sigh of relief, and turned his attention to getting out. The door was still a seamless slab of wood, but he found the hinges and tried to snap them off. At the first attempt the rusty edges cut into his palm, so he wr
apped the edge of his jacket around his hand and tried again. To begin with he thought he was not going to manage it, then quite suddenly the old metal broke away from the frame and the door sagged slightly. Encouraged, Michael attacked the second hinge which, loosened by the fracture of the other one, came off almost at once. The door fell outwards, crashing onto the ground. The sound reverberated through the gardens, splinters of rubble flew upwards, and scatterings of earth showered everywhere.
Michael dived out of the noisome stone room, and ran across the gardens towards the house. He expected to see or hear signs of life – they would surely have heard the crash – and he was getting ready to call out that there was nothing to worry about, but the house remained dark and still. A prickle of new anxiety jabbed at his mind, because whatever he had seen, or thought he had seen in that bolted and barred inner room, he had certainly seen someone run across the garden, and someone had shut him in that stone building.