With her husband still abroad, Mary Lawson turned to her brother Captain Myles Stafford for help. In response to her letter he came down from London and soon experienced the disturbances, as did a neighbouring friend, the Reverend Dominic Braccy, who had agreed to help Captain Stafford investigate the house. After a thorough search of the premises the two men sat up for an all-night vigil in the hall. Soon after midnight the Reverend Bracey heard the footsteps of someone walking across the floor of the main reception room. He threw open the door and shouted, ‘Who goes there?’ The ‘Narration’ continued:
‘Something flitted past him and he cried, “Look, against the door!” My brother was awake and heard the Reverend Bracey’s challenge. To their astonishment they continued to hear various noises but, although they examined everything everywhere, they could see nothing and found the staircase door fast secured as I had left it. We inquired of the Reverend Bracey what he had seen at the door and he replied that it was something like a moving shadow with nothing to cast it.
‘My brother sat up every night during the week he spent at our house. In the middle of one of them I was alarmed by the sound of a gun or pistol, discharged quite close to me, and immediately followed by groans as of a person in agony or on the point of death. My brother now earnestly begged me to leave the house.’
Mary Lawson took his advice, leaving with her family in August, 1776, to settle in a house in Curzon Street, London.
The photostats were followed by a further note in Henry’s handwriting:
‘Unfortunately the material I found at the BM made no mention of what happened to the house after the Lawson’s left it, and I did not have time to pursue the matter further.
I shall do my best to find out more when I next go up to London. Meanwhile I do hope that these notes will be of some use and that the suggestion that your house was once haunted will not disturb you. In fact, with a legend like that in its background, it makes an ideal setting for an author of horror novels!
‘P.S. I forgot to mention earlier that in Hilliard's Traditions and Anecdotes of Notable Wessex Families (published in 1864) there was the suggestion that some contemporary “slanderous scandalmongering” in connection with Sir Richard Elphick, who resided in Dorset, hinted that he had hastened the end of his wife in order to take advantage of her sister. Good stuff.’
For a long time I lay back holding the papers and blessing Henry. Here was a whole raison d’etre for the supernatural activity which my characters were about to face. Now there was no need to go back to the fourteenth century for the vague Black Death tradition; here was a splendid ready-made story that could be built up from the whisperings, as described by Mary Lawson, to truly horrific manifestations — manifestations which would threaten the sanity of Falco and Lorna. And the idea of the ‘Narration’ could be introduced in exactly the same way as it had come to me. Falco would strike up an acquaintance with a parson who had come across it in his researches into parish history.
I wondered if Mary Lawson knew of the previous history of the house. The phenomena she claimed to have experienced fitted in so perfectly with the story of Sir Richard and his sister-in-law that it would have been a remarkable coincidence if she had been unaware of it.
I decided that if one could ever get to the truth behind what happened in the house 213 years ago it would probably have had a psychological origin. Perhaps Mary Lawson had unconsciously created a situation based on her servants’ fears to focus attention on herself. With her husband abroad for a long period and her household in the middle of a country wood, she may have seen the so-called haunting as a lever to escape her social solitude. If so, she had been successful; it had got her to Curzon Street.
But whatever the cause, it was the effect that interested me, and my fingers flexed with eagerness to get on with my story. In the study, where raindrops on the windowpanes gave me a highly impressionistic view of the garden and the surrounding trees, I decided to work on the chapter where Falco, who has not yet received the explanatory ‘Narration’, hears the whispering, after Lorna’s arrival. And as I inserted a new sheet of paper into the Olympia I could not help reflecting on the similarity between that fictional scene and the real-life arrival of Ashley at Whispering Corner.
Then, thinking about Ashley and Lorna, I found that the features of the real girl began to blur those of my heroine. It was hard to imagine Lorna’s long fair hair when I thought of Ashley’s short dark curls; Lorna’s blue eyes darkened and took on the tiny golden flecks which I had noticed in Ashley’s eyes. That was when I knew that I would be using Ashley as the model for Lorna. And why not? It seemed as though whatever joker it is who watches over drunks and authors, having put me through the horrors of writer’s block, had relented at last and was now providing me with all the material I needed to get Whispering Corner finished on time.
I began to type.
Falco suddenly sat up in bed. Beside him Lorna lay asleep, her back turned to him, her head resting on her arm and her blon dark hair …
I had moved ahead in the story to write this scene while the inspiration from the ‘Narration’ was fresh upon me, but even so I was surprised that they had become lovers so soon. My next job would be to go back and write the big romantic scene in which they came together. Meanwhile I decided that I did not like the idea of Falco suddenly being wide awake. At this point the whispering would not be loud enough to jerk him out of his sleep. It must be insidious.
I x-ed out the lines and began again.
Falco slowly opened his eyes. For a moment he had no idea of what had woken him. In the moonlight streaming through the window he saw that Lorna, after their wild love-making which had ended in oblivion, had turned from him so that all he could see was her short dark hair on the pillow. She breathed softly, with the regular rhythm of someone safely in the lower levels of sleep.
He rubbed the back of his hand across his face in a characteristic gesture. If she were asleep then who was whispering? His instinct told him they were alone in the house. The whispering was not the monosyllables of burglars, yet what could explain the voice — no, two voices — murmuring words that he could not quite make out? It was like hearing a hushed conversation through a wall, reminding him of nights spent in cheap hotel rooms in his wandering days.
Suddenly one of the whisperers spoke more loudly. In a tone hardened by some deep emotion a woman cried, ‘Never! Never! Never!’
Then there was silence except for the hiss of the blood in his straining ears.
Puzzled, he got out of bed and went to the window to look out into the garden, now a place of silver and shadow (Note: Put in a description of the garden with the dark woods pressing upon it for weird effect. Strange shadows?)
Lorna turned in the bed to see him silhouetted against the glass.
‘Hold me tight,’ she murmured as she stretched her arms out to him. ‘I’ve had a beastly nightmare. A couple were whispering …’
I had typed five more pages when, glancing at the clock, I realized that it was time to get busy if I was to visit Ashley that afternoon. I would have to clear the fallen tree from the drive before I could set out in the Peugeot for the cottage hospital.
First I went down to the cellar in search of an axe. I had hardly ventured into the place apart from a perfunctory look to make sure that it was dry when I moved in. Deciding to leave it until I had a couple of days free to clear out generations of accumulated junk and whitewash the walls, I envisaged turning it into a games room for the entertainment of Steve and his college friends if they came to stay. I was anxious that even though his mother and I no longer shared the flat in London, there should still be a place which he could regard as a home base.
The feeble yellow light emitted by an unshaded and grime-encrusted bulb was just strong enough to throw shadows over piles of long abandoned household objects. The whitewash on the walls, which might have been fresh when Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee, was peeling like some ghastly skin disease. Although
the flagged floor still appeared to be dry, there was an odour of decay in the air that I concluded came from the small cellar beyond, which had probably been designed as a wine cellar.
It brought to mind Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Cask of Amontillado, which as a journeyman horror writer I regarded as one of the finest examples of our genre — horror without relying on the supernatural element. Poe would have loved my cellar. And obviously it would figure in the terrors of my unfortunate characters.
I remembered having seen an ancient carpenter’s bench against one cobwebbed wall — what on earth could spiders trap in this vault? — and now when I wrenched its drawer open I found assorted tools. I removed a rust-red saw and hurried up the steps to light and fresh air. Thankfully I shut the heavy door behind me — a door whose polished outer surface gave no hint of what lay below — and fastened the ornate iron bolt which must have been cast at least a century ago.
Outside the drizzle had stopped and streaks of blue were appearing in the sky as a fresh wind dispersed the vapour which had been brooding over the landscape since the storm. I drew the saw across the smooth grey bark of the trunk — it was too heavy to move intact — and fancifully wondered if the trees were hostile to this oasis in their midst, a semi-cultivated garden, a house — or to me.
The saw was as blunt as it was rusty and frequently I had to pause to get my breath back. On one occasion when I straightened up I saw that I was being observed by a pair of green eyes from a bank of ferns.
‘Mrs Foch? Puss, puss,’ I whispered soothingly, hoping that the bedraggled white cat regarding me was Miss Constance’s pet. Because I loved Whispering Corner I had developed a sentimental affection for the previous owner to whom it had been so important, and if I could take care of her only companion it would be the least I could do for her memory.
‘Mrs Foch? Mrs Foch.’
The animal responded to the sound of the name as though it recalled a dim memory of happier times. She moved out of the shadow of the fronds and I could see that once she must have been a prize animal. Now, though, her long white fur was matted and there was a wound on her head.
‘Come home, puss,’ I coaxed as I carefully extended my hand towards her. A rumbling purr began, but the next moment I was aware of something flashing past my shoulder and part of a dead branch struck the cat in the chest. With a hiss Mrs Foch vanished into the dripping undergrowth.
‘What the hell?’ I shouted, jumping to my feet.
Hoddy the handyman stood further up the drive, a sullen expression on his usually open features, a lock of hair hanging over one eye. He held a long-handled axe.
‘Why did you do that?’ I demanded.
‘’Cause I don’t like cats and I hates that one,’ he retorted. ‘Damn witch’s cat. If you’d let it get closer it’d have clawed your face.’
His antagonistic tone matched mine. I got control of my anger. As Henry Gotobed once remarked, Hoddy marched to the beat of a different drum and I knew it would be wrong to upset him. There was something about the way he swung his axe at a sapling which endorsed the view.
‘Vicar told me to come and help you clear away this old tree,’ he said in his old cheerful tone. He cast an amused look at the pitiful cuts I had made. ‘Reckon it’d be harvest home by the time that saw got through it.’
Later we dragged the severed trunk to the side of the drive and I took some money from my pocket.
‘You don’t need to pay me for a bit of a job like that, Mr Northrop,’ he said. ‘You paid generous for the work I did on the house.’ But he did not protest as I put a couple of pound coins in his hand.
‘Now, tell me, what have you got against that cat?’
He combed his hair with his fingers.
‘’Tweren’t just the cat. It were the old woman. She used to overlook folk, and when she did the cat was always with her. In them days it were something else, if you get my meaning.’
‘How do you know about Miss Constance overlooking people?’
‘When I went to school. All us kids knew. The older ones would warn the younger ones when they came to the infants. I tell you, Mr Northrop, we kept well clear of this part of the woods in them days, what with her and them ghosts from the plague times whispering to each other on Church Walk and …’
‘And … what?’
He suddenly turned his innocent smile upon me.
‘You’re just asking me these things to put in them scary books you write.’
I had to laugh at his perception.
The noise of an engine came from the lane. The breakdown truck had arrived to tow away Ashley’s car. When I returned from talking to the mechanic I found that Hoddy had vanished. I tried to call the cat back but in vain, and I thought that if Miss Constance had lived in the seventeenth or eighteenth century she would have probably been hanged as a witch.
At the Cottage Hospital I found Ashley lying comfortably in a four-bed ward.
‘How kind of you to come when I’ve already been such a nuisance,’ she said in her accentless voice.
‘Before we worry about that, tell me what’s been happening to you.’
‘I was X-rayed when I arrived and I had a jab. I think it was penicillin, or something like that, as insurance after I got so soaked and cold. The doctor said that they take bumps on the head very seriously and after seeing the X-ray he wants an EEG done. I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Just routine, I expect,’ I said with the cheerful optimism that visitors assume as soon as they enter a hospital ward.
She asked about the car.
‘It must have hit a tree when it left the road,’ I told her. ‘The mechanic said the engine had been knocked back several inches with the impact. No wonder you got such a bang. Don’t worry, though. The garage will get in touch with the company you hired it from. It’ll be covered by insurance. Anyway, a car is the last thing you’ll be needing for a bit. Dr Valentine said you should rest up for a few days when you’re discharged from here.’
‘Perhaps I can find a guesthouse, then,’ she said.
I remained silent, sensing that it was not yet the time to say what I had in mind, and busied myself instead with fighting to get a box of chocolates out of its wrapping of sealed plastic. ‘How did the accident happen?’
‘I suppose I must have skidded on the wet road. I can’t remember clearly. I’ve still got such a bloody awful headache.’
‘Is there anyone you’d like me to contact?’
‘I haven’t got anyone in England. Anyway you’ve done enough already.’
I shrugged.
For a while we said nothing, and I came to the conclusion that Ashley was not the sort to volunteer information about herself. If I wanted to know anything about her I would have to ask the questions.
‘You’re from Australia?’
‘What makes you think that? I don’t talk like an Aussie, do I?’
‘No, but you used the same word that an Australian friend who stayed with me used — crook.’
‘I’m a New Zealander.’
‘Oh, sorry. You on a tour — is that why you were on the road so late at night?’
‘Actually I’d been to your house.’
‘Whispering Corner?’
‘Right. All my life I’ve wanted to see it.’
My face must have shown surprise.
‘My aunt was a family legend.’
‘You were related to Miss Constance?’
‘She was my great-aunt. Her brother emigrated after the First World War to Godzone and set up as a dairy farmer in Taranaki. His son — my father — never came to England, never knew his aunt. All I can remember were the stories my grandfather used to tell about her, how she became eccentric after her fiancé was killed in action. When she died Dad inherited the house, but all he could think of was selling it and raising some cash. Things haven’t been too good for farmers out there since Britain joined the Common Market. Of course, I was sorry that I’d never seen the place, having heard Grandpa�
��s stories about it. You know how things get magnified in family anecdotes; when I was a kid Whispering Corner had become a cross between Shangri-La and Wuthering Heights. So when I arrived in England the first thing I wanted to do was visit it, even though it had passed out of our hands. That’s how I came to be there.’
‘So late at night?’
‘I’d only just arrived from Auckland — the longest air journey in the world. I was full of jet-lag. And instead of resting up in a hotel as I should have done, I decided to come straight down to Dorset, see Whispering Corner and find somewhere to stay in the neighbourhood while I got my plans sorted out. To begin with I felt all right. It must have been false energy, because I hired a car and drove down no trouble. Then, after a lot of difficulty — the locals aren’t exactly brilliant at giving directions — I found it in the late afternoon. I parked the Mini at the end of the drive and there it was. The house of my dreams. Only there was no one at home.’
‘I was in London, doing a radio,’ I said apologetically.
‘Anyway, I had a wander round the garden — you could make something of it if you really wanted to — and I must admit I pressed my nose against your windows.’
‘How disappointing for you, having come all that way.’
‘It’s funny the effect seeing the place had on me. As I said, it had become part of a family legend, and I honestly didn’t expect it to live up to what I had imagined. Yet when I saw it I was not at all disappointed. It seemed sort of … oh, it sounds ridiculous … well, it seemed to be waiting for me. I loved it at first sight.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘I felt something like that when I first saw it. You must be sorry that your father didn’t hold on to it long enough for you to have stayed in it for a while.’
‘At least I can say I’ve been inside it, and I am glad that it’s you who bought it. Anyway, after I’d had a poke round, the old jet-lag caught up with me and I decided to have a doze in the car. I thought I’d wake up in a few minutes, or when the householder came home. When I did wake up there was rain drumming on the roof and it was close to midnight. I’d been asleep for hours, and I was still dozy when I started the motor. My idea was to drive off and find a hotel. I didn’t want to stay in that dark wood with the wind doing its best to uproot the trees.’
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