Tower of Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  Teind House, when Krzystof finally reached it, was shrouded in darkness. Miss March was probably sheltering from the storm with her friend, Miss Laughlin, because only a fool or a maniac would have driven through that downpour, and Krzystof was thankful to remember the key she had given him at lunch which was clipped onto his keyring. He drove the car as near to the house as he could, skewing it so that the headlights fell on the front door. It was only a few steps away, but by the time he reached it his hair was plastered to his head, and his jacket was drenched. He unlocked the door and looked inside. The cold stormlight cast grey moving shadows across the oak floor of the hall, and Krzystof called out, ‘Miss March? Are you here? It’s me–I’m just parking the car.’

  Nothing. Silence. And the house had the feel that empty houses did have. Krzystof felt for the light switch, and reassuring yellow light flooded the hall. At least the storm had not killed the electricity yet. He ran back to the car to switch off the headlights, and then thought he had better park it more tidily so that if Lorna Laughlin drove up with Selina later on she would have room to manoeuvre. This time when he ran back to the house his shoes made squelching noises on the gravel. Krzystof swore and stepped inside, closing the door against the driving rain.

  The storm was crashing overhead and the lights were already flickering ominously. Krzystof glanced uneasily up at the ceiling, wondering where the storm lanterns would be. It might be a good idea to have one to hand, along with a box of matches. He would have a look in the kitchen in a minute. He dragged off his sodden jacket and hung it on the hatstand. He might as well step out of his shoes as well; there was no need to leave wet, gravelly marks all over Selina March’s polished floors. He could scoot upstairs in stockinged feet, and dry his hair in the bathroom.

  He bent down to take off his shoes, and it was then, his sightline nearer to floor level, that he saw something that sent a little scud of nervous fear across his skin. He straightened up slowly, his eyes on the old-fashioned black-and-white tiles. The electric light was still flickering, but it was more than enough to show the wet footprints crossing the hall. Krzystof stared at them. Footprints–wet footprints left by someone who must have come in from the storm a very short time ago. Someone who had gone across the hall and had not bothered about marking the nicely polished floor.

  Miss March? It must be. But the house had been in darkness when he arrived, and there was no indication that she had returned from Stornforth. And be logical, said Krzystof’s mind: would Selina, who polishes everything to within an inch of its life, really have walked across that floor in wet shoes?

  He remembered she had taken an umbrella, and turned to check the umbrella stand. Red because a red umbrella was cheerful in the rain, she had said, and Krzystof had reached into the stand for the red umbrella and handed it to her himself. It was not there now. It was not propped against the outside of the door to dry, either. Don’t be absurd, said his mind. She’s not here. You know she’s not here. Then who is it who came in here and walked across that floor? His heart began to beat more rapidly, but he went to the foot of the stairs and called out again. ‘Miss March? It’s me–I’m back from the storm. Are you up there?’

  Still that same silence. Or was it the same? Had the atmosphere of Teind House suddenly shifted, so that there was no longer the feeling of an empty house? Wasn’t there now the indefinable, unmistakable feeling of someone listening? He looked back at the footprints, and remembered that he had left the front door unlocked and partly open while he went back to the car. Had there been enough time for someone to get inside and hide? Oh God, yes, more than enough.

  He’s in the house, thought Krzystof. I can feel that he is. He’s lying in wait for me somewhere. Oh, don’t be ridiculous, that’s the urban legend of an intruder luring the unsuspecting householder outside, and then sneaking into the house to hide. I’m not falling for that hoary old one! he thought crossly. But Hungarian extra sense or not, he knew that there was someone inside Teind House, and he knew it was not Selina March.

  Just then, with their unnerving habit of dramatic timing, Teind House’s lights went out, plunging the hall into pitch darkness.

  It took Krzystof longer than he had thought to grope his way to the kitchen, and rummage in cupboards for the storm lamps, or, at the very least, a torch.

  The storm was reaching its zenith and as far as Krzystof could make out it had decided to do so directly above Teind House’s chimneys. He winced as lightning sizzled blindingly across the dark skies beyond the windows, thunder exploding at the same time by way of accompaniment. Donner and Blitzen again, whooping it up over northern Scotland.

  The lamps were neatly stored in a cupboard, with several boxes of matches next to them. It took a few minutes to get one lit, but Krzystof was used to field trips where lighting could be even more primitive than this, and he managed fairly well. He went back into the hall, carrying the lamp carefully, and looked about him, trying to decide what to do next. Nothing moved. The few bits of furniture stood exactly where they always stood: the carved dower chest was on the right of the door, and the narrow hall table that its maker had intended to hold an elegant salver for visiting cards, or a genteel arrangement of flowers, was next to the chest. Great-uncle Matthew’s clock was ticking away, and the hatstand was still partly covered by Krzystof’s rain-drenched jacket–a dark tumble of blackness. Krzystof glanced at it, and tried not to imagine that it might suddenly twist itself into a threatening bogeyman shape…

  The footprints were already starting to dry out, in the way that wet footprints inside a house did. They faded halfway across the hall, so that it was impossible to know where the intruder had gone. Krzystof hesitated, wondering if there mightn’t be some quite ordinary, innocent explanation. What? demanded his mind. Because it certainly isn’t Selina March who made those prints, and if it’s some amiably disposed neighbour sheltering from the storm, why didn’t he–or she–answer when I called?

  And surely it was incredible that some sinisterly intentioned person had been hiding in Teind’s grounds–perhaps in the little outbuildings that had once been a wash-house and disused earth closet–and had taken advantage of those few minutes when Krzystof had left the door open while he parked his car? Still, for all he knew, an entire network of burglars might be swarming all over Inchcape at this very minute. Itinerant serial killers might regard the place as a stopping-off point. Itinerant killers…How about an escapee from Moy? Now there was a chilling idea.

  Oh hell, thought Krzystof, I’m on my own in the middle of nowhere and I’m visualising homicidal maniacs creeping around all over the place. Yes, but I might be about to confront a murderous thug after the silver, he thought. Had I better call the police, I wonder? But when he went across to where the sit-up-and-beg telephone was discreetly housed under the stairs, there was no dial tone and no amount of jiggling the receiver produced one. The thunder crashed overhead again, and Krzystof recalled Selina March saying placidly that the phone lines had a way of disconnecting themselves in thunderstorms. And perhaps it was better not to start up a scare on such flimsy evidence, because it was always possible that Krzystof’s imagination had got the bit between its teeth and bolted into the realms of outright fantasy. But Joanna had vanished from this house several days earlier, and anything sinister, anything out of the ordinary, ought surely to be investigated. His heart was still jumping, but the idea that this intruder might provide a clue to Joanna’s whereabouts made the adrenalin kick in with what felt like a million volts. Krzystof thought he was no braver than the next man–in fact he suspected he was probably a lot less brave than the next man–but he would give a great deal for ten minutes with anyone who might have hurt his wife.

  He closed all the doors that led off the hall so that nothing could fool him by hiding or sneaking outside while he was searching the rest of the house, and then, gripping the oil lamp firmly, he set off up the stairs.

  It was a nightmare journey. At intervals the lightning tore through the ol
d house, illuminating everything with livid clarity, but between times dense shadows huddled in the corners of the half-landing, hunched outlines that might have been crouching intruders waiting to spring. There were black pools of darkness everywhere, which might contain anyone or anything, and several times the sparse branches of the trees leaned down to tap against the windows like skeletal ghost-fingers.

  Oh God, for electric light to see properly, and a phone to summon help! thought Krzystof, but he went doggedly forward. This was certainly turning out to be the classic walk through the storm-ridden house by flickering lamplight. Joanna would make a good tale of this when it was all over, and when he had finally found her. He clung to the thought of finding Joanna alive and well, and hearing her embroidering the whole thing for friends, burlesquing it in the telling. ‘And he wandered through the spooky old house like a Gothic hero, my dears, hunting for the ghosts who were all hiding under the beds like a game of Sardines.’

  Krzystof was not a Gothic hero at all, of course, any more than this was a ghost-hunt. For one thing, ghosts did not leave footprints.

  He paused at the centre of the first landing, looking about him. Several bedrooms, including Selina’s own, opened off the landing, as well as the antiquated bathroom. At the far end the stairs went up to the second floor, where his own half-attic room was, and where the water tanks lived in a grisly little half-room under the roof. OK, bedrooms first. One at a time. He was grateful for the heaviness of the oil lamp; if it came to a fight it would make a reasonable weapon. He looked warily into each of the bedrooms, slamming the door back against the wall each time, checking walls, windows—By this time his heart was beating so loudly that it felt as if it might burst out of his chest at any minute.

  In one of the unused bedrooms the curtains stirred gently, as if someone might be standing behind them. Krzystof tensed his muscles and whipped one curtain back, but there was nothing save the cold window panes, still spattered with rain from the storm, and a faint draught of air in one corner where the window did not fit very well. He drew the curtain across again, and went up to his own room, pushing the door back to the wall, and standing at the centre of the room, moving the oil lamp around to show up the dark corners. Was there someone here with him? Someone crouching in a corner, breathing very quietly? He moved the lamp round trying to see more clearly, and overhead the thunder growled threateningly again. Like a giant drawing in its breath, ready to bellow for a victim…

  A movement from within the green depths of the looking-glass over the dressing-table made his heart skip several beats before he realised that it was only his own reflection. He crossed to the window, and it was then that he saw what he had missed before. Beyond the glass, silhouetted blackly against the storm clouds massing over Inchcape, was the outline of the Round Tower.

  And within its depths, a light was flickering.

  There were only two courses of action, and only one of them was really sensible. That was for Krzystof to beat it down the stairs and out into the storm, locking the door on the way if he remembered, and then to drive like a bat escaping hell down to the Black Boar, to summon help.

  The other option, which was not, of course, to be seriously considered, was to go through the darkling orchard, across the patch of wasteland and along the disused little road, to find out what the hell was going in inside the tower.

  Krzystof stared at the elusive light for another thirty seconds or so, and then went quickly back down the stairs and out into the night.

  Through the darkling orchard and across the patch of wasteland to the disused road that led to the tower.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Robbie Glennon had been on an early turn of duty when Moy’s bell started to sound–seven a.m. to three p.m. it was–and only minutes earlier he had been thinking with relief that it was nearly the end of the shift.

  He had been planning on having his meal in Moy’s canteen, rather than at the cottage he was sharing with a couple of the other warders. The canteen usually served a fry-up around mid-afternoon: high tea for people coming off the seven o’clock shift, breakfast for people going on early evening duty. Coronary on a plate, people said, but when you had got up at six, and spent a day coping with Flasher Logan’s antics and one or two more, you were in a mood to say, Oh, sod the cholesterol levels, and pig out.

  He piled eggs and bacon and mushrooms onto his plate, accepted a mug of tea from one of the servers, and sat down to eat. The food was very good here; it was mostly local farm produce, delivered to Moy’s little cottage community every week. You could always tell really fresh stuff from mass-produced supermarket fodder.

  He was just taking his tray up to the serving hatch, and asking for a second cup of tea, when something seemed to shiver on the air–almost like a minor earth tremor–and after a moment he realised that somebody was sounding the huge old alarm bell. Almost at once a tremor of something seemed to ripple through Moy–in part fear, in part consternation, but in part a guilty excitement.

  Who is it? Who’s tried to get out? The murmur crackled like a forest fire through the different wings and blocks, and people started turning anxiously to one another and asking what the drill was for this. Did anyone know what they were supposed to do, for God’s sake?

  ‘Go to your own wings and wait in the main hall for instructions,’ said Don Frost harassedly. ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t any of you ever read the training manuals these days!’

  ‘Bur Mr Frost–sir–who is it who’s escaped?’

  ‘Don’t you know that yet?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘It’s Mary Maskelyne,’ said Don Frost tersely. ‘She’s strangled one of the doctors and disappeared.’

  If Mary had realised how easy it would be to outwit her gaolers and get out of prison she might have done it years ago. But years ago there had not been any particular incentive to escape, and in those days her face would have been too well known for her to pass in the world unrecognised. It had only been when she had heard about the woman living in Inchcape–the woman who knew about the towers of silence in India–that she had known what she must do.

  The first thing had been to establish that the woman in whose house Krzystof Kent was staying really was the bitch who had been in Alwar with Christabel and the other children. There was no point in upsetting the unblemished record of the last thirty-odd years if it was not the right person after all. A certain amount of cunning and stealth would be needed here, but Mary could be very cunning and very stealthy indeed when she had to. That was one of her strengths and it was one of her gaolers’ weaknesses: none of them had ever really known just how very cunning and clever she could be. Certainly none of them at Moy knew.

  And so she had asked her carefully off-hand questions of the warders who had been at Moy the longest, and she had listened with apparently casual attention to the answers. She had appeared to be interested in local history and local personalities after that–she had even taken a book called Folklore of Inchcape out of Moy’s small library. The talk by Joanna Savile last week had fired her enthusiasm to try her hand at one or two essays, she said. She thought she might start with something local, since there would probably be first-hand sources available for her researches. It made her laugh inside to see the approval on all the stupid flabbery faces.

  Folklore of Inchcape was a locally printed book by some boring old fart called Matthew McAvoy and Mary had no intention whatsoever of wading through its tedious pages. But borrowing it had opened up a conversation with the librarian, and within a very few minutes she had a name. Selina March.

  And Selina March, it seemed, was the great-niece of this Matthew McAvoy who had written about Inchcape, and had, from the look of the book, succeeded in suppressing any interest that might have existed in his subject.

  ‘He was one of our local scholars,’ said the librarian, who had been at Moy for several centuries as far as Mary could make out. ‘His niece still lives here as a matter of fact. A very respected lady in Inchcape,
Selina March. Orphaned young, of course–I believe the parents died in India when she was very small–some kind of uprising in the late nineteen forties I think–and Mr McAvoy and his sisters arranged for her to come back to England, and they brought her up between them.’

  ‘How interesting.’

  Selina March, said Mary’s mind. Selina March. It sang through her brain like an incantation, like a spell. And it all fitted, everything about it fitted, and she knew now that that first, gut-jabbing instinct had not betrayed her. The woman at Inchcape called Selina March was the child who had escaped from the tower all those years ago.

  So. So, the hated one was here: living perhaps as near as a mile from Moy. The information was so huge and so colossally satisfying that Mary wanted to run about and shout. She did not, of course. She sat very quietly in her room, and let the knowledge pour inwards, until it had filled up her entire mind and heart and body.

  She had the extraordinary feeling that she had been given this knowledge for a reason. Revenge? Was that the reason? Yes, of course, it was; revenge was what this was all about. It was about redressing the balance, and it was about retribution against the bitch who had let Christabel die and ruined Mary’s life as a result.

  If Christabel had still been whispering into Mary’s mind, Mary might have evolved a different kind of plan, but Christabel had turned out to be a traitor. Just when Mary needed that extra strength from Christabel, the selfish cow had vanished. But probably Mary did not need Christabel any longer; in fact when you looked at this sensibly, Mary was doing very nicely by herself these days, thank you.

  She thought very deeply and very carefully about Selina March, not sleeping at all that night, just lying on her bed and staring out of the small oblong of window. Skies were good things to watch when you needed to think: you could often see faces in the clouds, and the faces gave you ideas. And when the bell sounded for washing and breakfast at seven fifteen that morning, she had the plan all worked out. She felt a bit light-headed from not having slept and she felt a bit detached from everything as if she was separated from the world by glass. But she was not so detached and she was not so light-headed that she could not carry out her plan.