Suddenly Falco froze.
In the glass of the French windows he could see a man hanging. For a moment he stood without moving, and then it struck him that the man might not yet be dead. The thought released him from the paralysis of shock; he took a step forwards and realized that he was looking at a reflection.
He turned and saw that at the corner of the garden, hanging by his tie from the lowest branch of the great hornbeam, William Fortune swayed ever so slightly in the breeze.
His face was blackened in death, his granny glasses had slipped down his nose and his unblinking eyes were fixed on the gargoyles perched above the house.
I typed THE END and went to bed.
When I opened my eyes I was puzzled by the pattern of the shadows in my bedroom, until I looked at my watch and realized that I had slept through until midafternoon. With this realization came memory. Yesterday I had finished my novel, this morning the case brought against me by the bank had gone before the court.
In less than ten minutes I was hurrying along Church Walk towards the village, trying to stop myself thinking about Ashley and Warren and what I was likely to hear when I rang the solicitor. It was foolish, but when I reached the phone box I was reluctant to dial the number of the law firm; it was as though the house would remain mine until I knew the inevitable result of the morning’s proceedings. I delayed matters by ringing my agent.
‘Just thought I’d let you know I finished Whispering Corner last night,’ I told Sylvia Stone. ‘I’ve brought it in on time after all.’
‘I never thought you’d do it,’ she said. ‘How I’ll enjoy sending it to the Mount-William. Is it any good?’
‘You’ll have to decide that.’
She said she was sure it was marvellous, asked the number of words and when I’d get the typescript to her, and ended up by saying I’d better start thinking about my next novel.
When she rang off I could no longer postpone the moment of truth. I dialled the solicitor.
‘It went just as I expected,’ Mr Swan said in a voice of professional gravity. ‘The bank was given judgement against you. Unless you can clear the overdraft immediately I’m afraid the house will be put up for sale — probably by auction. I had a word with their solicitor afterwards, and the best I could do was get you a week’s grace to remove your belongings.’
‘Thanks,’ I said dully. Then I felt anger suffuse me.
‘And I suppose the bank isn’t going to do anything about bloody Charles Nixon.’
‘Well, in the circumstances, they hardly could even if they wanted to.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Then you don’t know. Charles Nixon was found dead in Richmond Park this morning.’
‘Suicide?’ I said finally.
‘Yes. He hanged himself.’
I replaced the receiver knowing I was a murderer.
*
I shall not go into my emotional state as I returned through the woods or the agony of guilt that frequently overwhelmed me. Suffice to say that when I entered the house I had made up my mind as to what had to be done.
For a while I sat on the sofa in the living room, looking into the depths of my glass. Then as the twilight drew on I went to my study and brought down the typescript of my novel. I glanced at the first page, which seemed to have been written in another lifetime: James Falco pushed his way down the overgrown path and suddenly beheld the house known as Whispering Corner.
I had not dreamed of Ashley’s existence when I wrote that.
I struck a match, lit one corner of the page, watched the blue flame curl the edge and tossed it into the empty fireplace. Then page by page I burnt my novel.
Sometimes I read a sentence before adding it to the pyre; here Falco heard the whisperings which were the prelude to the haunting, there he walked in the moonlit garden with Lorna. Once I paused too long reading a description of the woods that I had been particularly pleased with, and had to relight the fire. But when I came to a description of William Fortune I no longer dared to look at the typed lines. I turned the rest of the pages over so that I could not see the writhing lines of typewritten words as they burned.
I sat for a long time unable to focus my mind on what must be done next. How was I to break it to Sylvia that the novel she had been so supportive over was now nothing more than a mound of grey ash? I must have drunk quite a lot as I tried to dull the misery which welled up within me and shut out the recurring mental picture of a body dangling beneath a tree.
At midnight I climbed to my feet and mounted the stairs like a man twice my age. I just wanted oblivion, but for some reason I cannot explain I continued up the stairs to the third floor where brilliant moonlight shone through an open door. I approached and saw the telescope gleaming on its tripod, its barrel still askew as I had pushed it when I inadvertently spied on Warren and Ashley.
And I saw something else — the figure of a woman in a silken dress whose hem touched the floor, an old woman with a gentle face and white hair held by old-fashioned combs. Without a sound she crossed to the table in the centre of the room, laid her fingertips upon it and gave me a look — a look which seemed to me to be one of compassion. And then she was gone. No fading away — just no longer there.
I had finally seen the true spirit of Whispering Corner.
There was nothing frightening about the experience. It was as though Miss Constance, whose grief had moulded her life, had wanted to convey something to me in my hour of desperation.
‘Miss Constance,’ I called.
The only reply was a mewing from her cat who had followed me upstairs. Mrs Foch had sensed her presence.
I called again, but I knew there would be no answer.
Then I went to the table to see what her fingers had touched. There lay the poem written in her fiancé’s hand. It was folded as before so that only the last verse was visible, an intimation of hope that transcended time to save my sanity.
And so like clouds above, all swiftly passing,
Our joy and sorrow comes alternately.
And over all I seem to hear this message:
Endure — take all that comes unwearily.
Something’s calling,
Gladly calling,
Time will come when you will yet be free.
The next day I quit Whispering Corner.
EPILOGUE
Last night I finished my Narration.
This afternoon the dazzle of the sea is painful even through sunglasses as I sit on the terrace. Mrs Foch dozes in the same patch of shade and, like me, the heat has turned her into a creature of the night. After sundown she comes to life and chases stilt-legged crabs along the coral beach.
Palms rattle in the oven wind, in the bungalow the ululation of Radio Bagdad comes courtesy of Ashley’s old radio, and I am drained now that I have completed my task of recording what actually happened during my occupancy of Whispering Corner.
On the table beside me is mail that was delivered after the last inbound flight seven days ago. During the long hours at my typewriter I was too preoccupied to open it. Today I find that these letters have a remote quality about them, like messages in bottles which have drifted from another dimension.
When I left Whispering Corner I flew out to Abu Sabbah where some day — fundamentalist plastiquers permitting — I may work at the Hamid IV College. Meanwhile I earn my keep, the beach house and basic necessities in a most agreeable way. I have become King Syed’s rawi.
Once a week, in a state of painstaking sobriety, I visit the royal palace, and after we have dined it is my duty to entertain by storytelling. At first I read chapters from Shadows and Mirrors but latterly I have taken to improvising stories in the old Arabian vein which always begin with ‘Know, O King …
For these evenings I have discarded my M&S safari suit for a rawi’s blue robe. Perhaps in a previous existence I sat in the dust outside a mosque telling wondrous tales of poor fishermen, flying unicorns, and lovelorn daughters of sultans for copper coins.
/> Apart from these weekly meetings with Syed, Jo sometimes rides her great black horse along the shore to my house for what she terms a ‘talkfest’, free from protocol. Over the weeks I have told her much of what I have written in my Narration, and to my own surprise more and more about my marriage.
‘It may not be the love affair of the century,’ she commented once, ‘but it seems you two had friendship, and friendship counts for a lot in this tacky world. I guess when you found yourselves on your own as two people instead of parents you should have given each other a chance. If Pamela had stayed in London and you hadn’t become the hermit of the woods you might have discovered new things about each other.’
‘Too late now,’ I said, and I said it with regret. Jo was right when she remarked that love can be instant — real companionship only evolves with time and experience. And there comes a time when companionship becomes the most valuable emotional asset.
I have been thinking about Pamela a lot lately, perhaps because she is the only person I have corresponded with since I began my exile — apart from the Reverend Henry Gotobed to whom I send postcards of thanks for forwarding letters which still arrive at my house.
I say ‘my house’ because Whispering Corner still belongs to me. A couple of days before it was to be taken over officially by the Regent Bank a cable arrived from Y. S. Akkim, the Hollywood producer who made his name by filming Martin Winter’s uneasy stories, offering a seemingly impossible sum for the rights to Shadows and Mirrors. The result was that I easily cleared the Pleiades debt and still have more in my new bank account than I previously thought possible.
Too much had happened for me to continue in Whispering Corner — redolent of lost love — with a calm mind. Nor could I rent it with a clear conscience for fear the latent power which turned my imagination into reality might equally menace the next tenant. Thus it stands empty. Its woodwork will decay, its windows will shatter to vandals’ stones and the garden will revert to wilderness. In one of his letters Henry wrote that he had seen Hoddy prowling around it, but in all other respects the young man appears to have recovered from his ordeal.
Among the mail I read today was a card depicting the white sails of the Sydney Opera House, with no address and a few words in Warren’s hand: ‘All well. Married last week. Preparing for responsibilities of parenthood. Never forget you.’
Dear Sylvia Stone wrote asking if I could remember enough of my destroyed typescript to rewrite it. Clipper Press is desperate for a new novel from me since plans for the filming of Shadows have been announced with the usual hype. I shall reply that my writing days are over, for who knows what might happen if I portray more characters? My creative outlet will remain the verbal telling of Arabian fairy tales.
Other letters included an unexpectedly cheerful note, postmarked London, for my birthday from Pamela. Paul Lincoln sent me a complicated tax scheme and news about the winding up of Pleiades Films.
Which brings me to the late Charles Nixon.
Since I have been here I have regarded myself as responsible for his suicide. I had vengefully described it in fiction and it happened in fact, and I have wondered to what degree the malign forces which had been activated by my imagination had been taking possession of me during those last days when I was finishing Whispering Corner.
Ironically, I was blamed for the tragedy at the inquest, but for a totally different reason. A young actor friend of Nixon’s accused me of harassing him because the letter from my solicitor had been found in his pocket.
Now, for the first time, I am uncertain as to my guilt, thanks to a letter, redirected from Dorset to Abu Sabbah, from Olwen Nixon. It is brief, obviously written in quiet desperation, and intended out of her deep sense of fairness to reassure me after the accusation of harassment. She explained that the real reason her husband went into Richmond Park that night was because he had been informed that he had the latest plague to afflict mankind.
But still I wonder.
Although the exercise in catharsis has been successful in that I sleep without voices whispering in my dreams, there is still much to come to terms with — but that is for some day in the future. This evening I must obey a royal summons, and now the sun is balancing on the tawny hills and the first cool zephyr of evening is stirring Mrs Foch’s silken fur. At nightfall the king’s Rolls will come to take me to the airport.
Following the sabotage of Syed’s college he made several concessions to the orthodox including the abandonment of mixed sex education. When the new college opens there will be segregated recreation areas and separate classes for boys and girls, taught by lecturers of the appropriate gender. Among the female lecturers required is one to act as my counterpart in the English department, and here Jo has shown her Machiavellian hand.
‘We have found a person absolutely suitable to teach the girls English,’ she wrote in a note brought by an army motorcyclist. ‘She is arriving by this evening’s flight to see if she could live happily in the kingdom, and we feel that you should be there to greet her in your official capacity. You can’t miss her as you know her well.’
Pamela!
If you enjoyed Whispering Corner, we would be really grateful if you could leave a review on the Amazon page and Goodreads.
You might also be interested in Ghoul:
For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
A NOTE FOR THE CURIOUS
Sometimes it is of interest to speculate on how much of a novel’s background is purely imaginary and how much based on fact. While the author of Whispering Corner is at pains to stress that the characters in this book are fictitious and bear no resemblance to any living persons, it must be admitted that the character of Andrew McAndrew was inspired by the late Reverend Dr Donald Omand who was one of the foremost practitioners of the Ministry of Exorcism in Britain.
The author had the honour to be both friend and biographer of Dr Omand, and has witnessed him performing exorcisms both at home and abroad. The method of exorcism described in the novel is based on these.
Although the house in the novel and its environs exist only in the author’s imagination, there is a spot known as Whispering Corner close to the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin outside the Dorset village of Lychett Matravers. According to local legend the name came about because indistinct voices of plague victims are heard there. In fields bordering the real Church Walk there are mounds thought to be foundations of dwellings which made up the abandoned pre-plague village.
Mary Lawson’s ‘Narration’ in the novel owes much to a lady named Mary Ricketts who in 1770 resided in a Hampshire manor house known as Hinton Ampner.
Here she experienced both ghostly and poltergeist phenomena which grew in intensity until she was forced to leave in the August of the following year. She found the experience so remarkable that she described them in a Narration to be kept in her family. A hundred years ago it was published in The Gentleman’s Magazine.
After the Ricketts left Hinton Ampner it was let to a family named Lawrence who immediately experienced paranormal happenings and left abruptly. After this the house remained empty until it became derelict and had to be demolished.
The exploding glass may be an extreme manifestation of a poltergeist in conjunction with haunted premises, but it is known outside the pages of fiction. In October, 1985, Mark Jordan of Capital Radio visited the King’s Arms in Peckham Rye, South London, in search of material for a Hallowe’en programme. The pub is reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of air raid victims from the Second World War when it was struck by a bomb.
Mark Jordan had been interviewing the landlord and his wife for several minutes when he asked them if they had ever considered having the place exorcised. At that moment a glass on the bar by him literally exploded and the sound of this followed by cries of alarm and the clatter of fleeing feet were caught on tape and heard by millions of radio listeners.
The poem quoted i
n Whispering Corner as being written by Miss Constance’s fiancé actually appeared in A Soldier’s Poems, published during the First World War, by R. E. Alexander who served with the Seventh Queen’s Own Hussars.
Finally it should be explained that the kingdom of Abu Sabbah is so small that it is only to be found on the most imaginative of large-scale maps.
Whispering Corner Page 32