Tower of Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  Patrick and Don Frost turned to stare at her, and Patrick said, in a questioning voice, ‘A sister who died nearly thirty years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ingrid,’ said Patrick, softly. ‘Dear God, of course. Ingrid.’

  ‘We couldn’t have guessed it,’ said Patrick, at last. ‘And yet the clues were all there.’ He looked at Joanna. ‘It’s why you came here–to Inchcape and Moy, isn’t it? You could have gone anywhere for your research, but you chose to come here.’

  ‘I wanted to see her,’ said Joanna. She was leaning forward, her arms curled around her bent knees, staring into the depths of the fire. ‘I wanted to see the woman who killed Ingrid.’ She glanced round the room. ‘The murder happened before I was born, but the–the shock-waves of it went on for years and years. It was as if I was born into those shock-waves. My family was shattered by Ingrid’s death–well, you’ll realize that: it was a particularly brutal murder, wasn’t it? But as well as that, they were ashamed. They were very conventional people, and what had upset them almost as much as the murder was learning about the relationship between Ingrid and Mary. It was the Sixties by then, but being gay wasn’t really accepted, you see. Not by older people at any rate. My parents didn’t understand about Ingrid, and they didn’t really want to understand. So they clamped a lid down on it and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened. I can see that now, although I couldn’t work it out at the time.’

  ‘And your parents wouldn’t have forgotten what had happened,’ said Krzystof. ‘It isn’t the kind of thing anyone ever could forget.’

  ‘No. From time to time, little bits of the truth got out, like steam hissing out from a boiling saucepan. It was a peculiar atmosphere to live in. And when I was born my parents were both well into their forties, so I grew up in–well, in the atmosphere of an older generation. Almost the aura of the Forties and Fifties. There were whispers behind hands, and warning looks between aunts and cousins.’ She gave a half-smile. ‘I don’t mean to go all Brontë about it, but for years I sort of sensed there was something wrong somewhere. Something in the family history that people were very carefully not talking about. I used to have the most appalling nightmares.’

  Krzystof said, half to himself, ‘The barely understood secret became woven into childhood nightmares and childhood fears, and in the end, it called the poor mangled ghosts out of their uneasy resting places…’

  ‘And at times,’ said Joanna, turning to look up at him, ‘the pretence spilled over into ordinary life. You read my notes.’

  ‘Yes. I had to, in case there was a clue in them that would help me to find you. And there was a clue,’ he said. ‘Only I was too dense to see it. You were writing about your own childhood, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Writing it out, maybe. Catharsis,’ she said, looking across at Patrick. ‘Confronting the nightmare, isn’t that what you’d recommend?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Don.

  ‘When I was ten I finally found out about Ingrid–about what had happened to her. My father died, and I was helping to sort out some of his things. There was an old newspaper cutting: I read it in the attic–it was about the only place where I could ever be private.’ She paused again, and then said, ‘Afterwards I always associated the whole thing about Ingrid with the scent of the attic–dust and discarded books, and old furniture. Anyway, I made a vow the way Selina March made a vow–only hers was to keep a shrine to her parents. My vow was to one day confront the monster who had killed my sister and spoiled my family’s life.’

  ‘And?’ This was Patrick again.

  ‘And,’ said Joanna, speaking very deliberately, ‘when I did see her, that afternoon at Moy, I saw a poor, mad, middle-aged woman, who was determinedly trying to cling to a grisly notoriety from the past. At first I simply couldn’t equate her with the creature I’d visualised for so many years.’ She paused, and then said, very softly, ‘And then she looked straight at me, and it was–it was the most extraordinary feeling. I felt as if I was being dragged down into a pit of icy black water. I never actually hated her, not directly, because I never knew Ingrid. So there wasn’t very much emotion about the meeting.’

  She paused, and Emily, listening intently, thought: I bet there was, though.

  ‘But,’ said Joanna thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so spooked by anyone in my whole life.’

  ‘She’s a very remarkable creature,’ said Patrick gently. ‘If that intelligence and that strength could have been directed into more positive channels, she might have done anything, become anything.’

  ‘But it went wrong.’

  ‘Yes. She’s very very sick, of course.’

  ‘Has she ever had any happiness?’ Emily asked the question hesitantly, and Patrick did not immediately reply. She said, a bit defensively, ‘Listen, I’m not being stupid or bleeding-heart about it. It’s just that I’d like to think she wasn’t always in that black icy pit that Joanna referred to just now.’

  Patrick said, ‘Descriptive prose would be more Joanna’s thing than mine. But Mary’s life has been a–a very dark life. It’s been filled up with hatred and anger for a long long time. But occasionally, in that darkness, I think there have been moments of happiness.’

  Joanna said, ‘Like unexpected splashes of sunshine in a dark old house.’

  Patrick smiled at her. ‘I said the descriptions were your job, didn’t I? But, yes. For most of her life Mary has lived in the shadows. But—’

  Joanna said softly, ‘But even someone who lives in a shadow-world occasionally steps into an unexpected patch of happiness.’

  A patch of happiness…

  Joanna was brushing her hair at the dressing-table in the Black Boar’s large double bedroom, and Krzystof was seated in the chair by the bed, watching her. He thought he would never want to take his eyes off her.

  Joanna had put Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto on the portable tape recorder that Krzystof had brought from Teind House, and had taken a long hot bath with every drop of scented oil and bath essence she could find tipped in. Krzystof had opened a bottle of the Black Boar’s champagne, which they were now drinking. Neither of them had spoken much, because they had not needed to by that time. But when Joanna smiled at him in the mirror, Krzystof was so consumed by happiness that there was a feeling of pressure inside his chest, as if his heart might burst. Fine thing if I succumb to a heart attack, he thought. Yes, but I never thought I’d get the chance to feel like this again.

  Joanna said, a bit hesitantly, ‘How is your leg feeling?’

  ‘Bloody painful.’ He limped across the room to close the curtains. It was dark outside; Krzystof saw, with vague surprise, that it was well after midnight. ‘I expect you could sleep for a fortnight,’ he said.

  ‘Sleep be blowed,’ said Joanna, setting down her champagne glass, and coming towards him.

  A patch of happiness…

  Emily had been clearing up the plates and coffee cups, and she was just dunking everything in the sink in the cottage’s little kitchen when she heard the door open, and Patrick came quietly in.

  He said, ‘Don’s driving Gillian down to the village to get her car. It’s still parked there, apparently.’

  ‘Oh.’ Emily squirted washing-up liquid into the bowl.

  ‘He’s offered her the spare bedroom here, for tonight. The police are still crawling all over Teind House.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ In a minute she would have to turn round and face him in the knowledge, not of the nightmare that had just happened to them all, but of that other, earlier nightmare that had been between just the two of them.

  I love your mind and I love everything about you…he had said. I can’t begin to think how I’m going to walk away from you, but you must believe that it would never work…

  And he had walked away, just as if they had never clung together for those dizzying few moments, just as if their bodies had not fused, and–what was more important and far rarer–as if the
ir minds had not met and blended and flowed seamlessly into one—

  ‘Are you going back to Durham?’

  ‘I expect so. Yes, of course I am. If I go all out for it, I might manage to take my Finals in the summer.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ mumbled Emily, bending over the washing up.

  ‘Come back here, Em. Would you?’

  ‘To this cottage?’

  ‘To me,’ he said, and Emily turned round, the stupid tears half blinding her so that she could hardly see him, but finding that it did not matter, because his arms were reaching out for her, and happiness–the real thing, the genuine piercing happiness that was so strong you could practically taste it–was filling up the entire kitchen.

  In her narrow, hatefully familiar room inside Moy, Mary swam in and out of the drug-induced drowsiness. For most of the time her mind drifted aimlessly on a sea of uncaring half-consciousness, but there were moments when she was able to shake it off, and to consider the events of the last twenty-four hours, and wonder whether her break-out had been reported to the press yet, and, if so, what the press had made of it.

  Remarkable bid for freedom by the famous Sixties killer, Mary Maskelyne…Mary Maskelyne today cheated her gaolers and was, for a few hours, a free woman…

  What none of the press reports would say, of course, was that for those few hours when she had been free, the ghosts of her enemies and her victims had walked with her. Her parents. Darren Clark. Curious to think that although she could not remember what he looked like, Darren Clark’s daughter was somewhere out there in the world, working, living her life, maybe with a boyfriend or a husband. Had she ever been told who her parents really were, that child who had had dark hair and blue eyes when she was born? A daughter…A new idea began to take shape in Mary’s mind.

  Supposing that one day the newspapers carried headlines that said things like, Emotional reunion between Mary Maskelyne and the daughter she was forced to give up…‘I never forgot her,’ said Mary, a catch in her voice. ‘I always knew that one day I would find her.’

  It would make a very good story. She could do the emotional catch-in-the-voice thing pretty easily, and she could even write an account of it all if they wanted. Yes, she would rather like to do that. And finding, and meeting, the child would be something to plan for in the dreary years ahead. You had to have something to aim for, otherwise you would go mad in a place like this. She began to turn over various ideas in her mind, knowing she would think of something, knowing that whatever she thought of would be good. Never mind its being good, let’s make it newsworthy.

  And what of Selina March? They had told her that Selina had died tonight; Mary was still not sure if she believed this, because it would be like the conniving creatures who ran Moy to say it, purely to prevent Mary from trying to get out again. So she would have to listen and watch very carefully to find out the truth of that.

  But even if Selina was dead, the bitch might find a way to come back. Christabel had done that over the years: she had whispered things into Mary’s ear when no one was around. Ingrid, the faithless cow, had done it as well. Mary had seen Ingrid very clearly indeed tonight: she had seen her looking out through the eyes of that woman, Joanna Savile.

  Ghosts. They never quite left you. They affected your whole life, and they stayed with you for ever. As Mary drifted into sleep again, she was once again feeling, quite strongly, that Christabel’s ghost was very near.

  Christabel Maskelyne did not sleep very well that night, because she did not sleep very well any night. You had to remain alert; you had to be constantly on the look-out for the creatures who lived inside the dreadful towers. They were cunning, those ogre-creatures; they donned their human masks and their human manners, but Christy knew them for what they were. She had known, the instant the great clanging bell started to boom its horrid warning, that the ogre-creatures would be involved somewhere, and she had known she must be more watchful than ever. The ogres were still out there in the world–the sonorous note of the bell might even be to warn people of them.

  Eventually, she drifted into the light shallow sleep that was the only rest she had known for half a century.

  Of the people whose lives had been affected by the tragedy of Alwar and the Tower of Silence, only one lay silent and unknowing tonight, and only one had gone beyond the pain and the fear and the ghosts.

  Selina March, carefully laid out in Inchcape’s little Chapel of Rest, awaited the good Christian funeral she would be given by the little community in which she had lived for almost her whole life. There would be a post-mortem, of course, and an inquest, but it had already been agreed that once those unpleasant formalities were over, it was only right that Selina be buried next to her two great-aunts and her great-uncle.

  Everyone agreed it was what she would have wanted.