Victoria Holt

by The Shivering Sands

  She smiled at me gratefully. Anyone who could soothe Sir William was a friend of hers.

  ***

  The disaster happened two days later. I went to the room next to Sir William’s. Mrs. Lincroft was there. She whispered to me: “He’s a little poorly today. He’s dozing in his chair. How dark it is. There’s been nothing but rain all day. I did think it showed signs of brightening a little, but now it’s as bad as ever.”

  The music was laid out for me…the pieces Sir William had chosen. I glanced at the top sheet, which was Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

  “I think I’d better light the candles,” said Mrs. Lincroft.

  I agreed and when she had done so I sat down at the piano and she tiptoed out of the room.

  As I played I was thinking of Napier and feeling increasing indignation at the way in which he was accused before anything had been proved against him.

  I finished the sonata and to my surprise the next piece was Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre, an unusual choice I thought. I began to play. I thought of Pietro who had always brought something indescribably spine-chilling into the playing of this piece. He said that when he played it, he saw the musician as a kind of pied piper who, instead of luring children into the mountain side, brought people out of their graves to dance round the piper…in the dance of death.

  It had grown darker outside and the light from the candle was scarcely adequate, but I did not really need to read the music.

  And then suddenly I was not alone. I thought at first that my playing had indeed conjured up a ghost for the figure in the doorway looked like a corpse.

  “Go away…Go away…” cried Sir William. He was staring at me in a fixed, stony way. “Why…did you…come…back.”

  I stood up, and as I did so he cried out in horror; and the next thing I knew he was lying on the floor.

  Frantically I called to Mrs. Lincroft, who fortunately was not far off.

  She stared at him in dismay.

  “What…happened?”

  “I was playing Danse Macabre,” I began…

  I did not finish, for I thought she was going to faint.

  Then she was her competent self again. “We must send for the doctor,” she said.

  ***

  Sir William was very ill indeed. He had had another stroke and there were several doctors with him. It was thought that he might not recover.

  I told them that I had been playing and suddenly I had looked up and seen him in the doorway. As he could scarcely walk it must have been a great effort for him to do so, and that effort, said the doctors, could have been the cause of his collapse.

  In a day or two it was believed that he was not going to die after all and Mrs. Lincroft was greatly relieved.

  She said to me: “This will mean that Napier will stay after all. I’m sure Sir William doesn’t remember what has happened to Edith. He’s a little hazy about everything and keeps fancying he’s back in the past.”

  ***

  That July was a wet one; there was rain for several days and the skies were overcast.

  Sybil Stacy came to my room to talk to me. I had to light the candles although it was only late afternoon. Sybil in deep mauve dress trimmed with black bows—and mauve bows in her hair—had chosen a color which I had never seen her wear before.

  “Mourning,” she whispered.

  I started up from my little table at which I had been preparing lessons.

  She wagged a finger coyly at me. “For Edith,” she said.

  “But how can you be sure?”

  “I am sure. She would have come back if she wasn’t dead. Besides everything points to it. Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think, but I prefer to believe that she is alive and one day she will walk in.” I turned to the door as though I expected her. Sybil turned too and watched it expectantly.

  Then she shook her head. “No, she can’t come back. She’s dead, poor child. I know it.”

  “You can’t be sure,” I repeated.

  “Strange things are happening in this house,” she went on. “Don’t you feel it?”

  I shook my head.

  “You aren’t telling the truth, Mrs. Verlaine. You do feel it. You’re sensitive. I know it. I shall put it in my picture when I paint it. Strange things are going on…and you know it.”

  “I wish…oh how I wish Edith would come back!”

  “She would if she could. She was always so meek and would do what people wanted. You know what’s happened, don’t you…to William?”

  “He’s very ill, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, and all because he came to see who was playing.”

  “He knew I was playing.”

  “Oh no he did not, Mrs. Verlaine. That’s where you’re wrong. He thought it was someone else.”

  “How could he? I play to him often.”

  “He chooses the music for you, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know. He chooses the pieces he likes to hear, pieces which remind him of pleasant things. And now because of what happened Napier will stay. I believe Napier would have had to go but for what had happened. So what is good for Napier is bad for Sir William. One man’s meat, so they say, is another’s poison. Oh how true! How true! Listen to the rain. It rained on St. Swithin’s Day. You know what that means, Mrs. Verlaine. Forty days and forty nights it will rain now…and all because it rained on St. Swithin’s Day.”

  She snuffed out the candles. “I like the gloom,” she said. “It fits everything doesn’t it? Tell me what piece you were playing when Sir William came to the doorway.”

  “Danse Macabre.”

  She shivered. “The Dance of Death. Well, it was nearly, wasn’t it? For Sir William. It’s an eerie piece of music. Did you think it was strange that he should have chosen it?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You would have thought it more strange if you had known it was the last thing Isabella played that day. She sat at the piano all morning and she played it over and over again. And William said: ‘For God’s sake stop playing that mournful thing!’ And she stopped and she went out into the woods and shot herself. It’s never been played in this house since…until you sat at the piano and played it.”

  “It was in the music he set for me to play for him.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t put it there.”

  “Oh! Then who did?”

  “That’s what would tell us a great deal. It was someone who wanted Sir William to hear it…to think that it was Isabella come back to haunt him. It was someone who hoped he’d get up from that chair and see you playing there…because it was dark, wasn’t it…as dark as it is now. It was someone who wanted him to fall down and hurt himself. It was someone who wanted to tell him that they knew.”

  “Who could do such a thing? It was cruel.”

  “Crueler things have been done in this house. Who do you think would do it? It might have been someone who was afraid of being sent away, and who wouldn’t be if Sir William were dead—because he might have died, you know. Then on the other hand it might have been someone else.”

  I was deeply disturbed. I wanted her to leave, that I might be alone with my thoughts.

  She seemed to sense this. In any case she had said what she had come to say.

  “How can we be sure, Mrs. Verlaine?” she asked.

  And shaking her head sadly she went to the door.

  ***

  Sylvia came to her lessons with her two plaits wound round her head—a concession to growing up. Good heavens, I thought, is her mother really trying to catch Godfrey Wilmot as a husband for her daughter? Poor Sylvia, she looked most self-conscious. In fact she almost always was. She gave me the impression that she had been sent to do something unpleasant and would know no peace until she had done her duty.

&n
bsp; She was sixteen—another year before she reached that age which was the conventional one for putting up the hair.

  She went through her lesson in a parrot-like way. What could I say? Only: “Try to get a little more expression into it Sylvia. Try to feel what the music is saying.”

  She looked puzzled. “But it doesn’t say anything, Mrs. Verlaine.”

  I sighed. Really, I thought, now that Edith was gone my job was not worth doing. I could have made a competent pianist of Edith, someone to enchant the guests who came to her parties. I could have taught her to draw comfort and great pleasure from music—but Sylvia, Allegra and Alice…

  Her hands were in her lap, those rather spatulate fingers with the nails painfully trying to grow. Even now she lifted her hand to her lips and dropped it hastily tasting in time the bitter aloes which her mother made her use.

  “The trouble is, Sylvia, that you are too absentminded. You’re not thinking of your music. You’re thinking of something else.”

  Her face lightened suddenly. “I was thinking of a horrible story Alice wrote. You know she’s always writing stories. Mr. Wilmot says her essays show real talent. Alice says she wants to write stories like Wilkie Collins…the sort that make you shiver.”

  “She must show me some of her stories. I’d like to see them.”

  “She reads them to us sometimes. We have to sit by the light of one candle in her room and she does the actions. It’s frightening. She could be an actress too. But she says what she wants most is to write about people.”

  “What was this story?”

  “It’s about a girl who disappears. No one knows where she’s gone. But just before she disappeared someone dug a hole in a copse which was near the house where she lived. There were some children who saw the hole in the copse. They nearly fell into it when they were playing and they came and watched and they saw a man. He saw them watching and he said that he was digging a trap to catch a man-eating lion because there were lions in this place. But they didn’t believe him because people don’t dig traps for lions, they shoot them. Of course he could only say that to the children but to pretend to the grown-ups, he said he was going to help someone dig up his fields. But he murdered the girl and buried her in the copse and everyone thought she had run away with her lover.”

  “It’s not a very healthy sort of story,” I said.

  “It makes your hair stand on end,” said Sylvia.

  It was certainly making mine do so because I had suddenly remembered seeing Napier come into the stables with gardening tools. He had been helping Mr. Brancot to dig his garden, he had said.

  ***

  When I next rode out alone I turned my horse toward the Brancots’ cottage. The garden looked neater than it had when I last saw it. I pulled up and stood looking at it.

  I was fortunate, for while I was trying to think of an excuse for calling, old Mr. Brancot came out of the house.

  “Good afternoon,” I said.

  “Good afternoon, Miss.”

  “It’s Mrs. Mrs. Verlaine. I’m the music teacher, up at Lovat Stacy.”

  “Oh aye. I’ve heard of you. How are you liking this part of the country?”

  “I find it very beautiful.”

  He nodded, well pleased. “Wouldn’t want to leave it,” he said. “Not if you paid me a hundred pounds for doing it.”

  I replied that I had no intention of doing so either and added that his garden was looking in good shape.

  “Oh yes,” he answered, “it’s looking fine now.”

  “Much better than when I last saw it. It’s been dug over since then.”

  “Dug over and planted,” he said. “Easy to keep in order now.”

  “It must have been a big job. Did you do it all yourself?”

  He grinned and whispered: “Well, between you and me, I had a little help. You won’t believe it but one afternoon Mr. Napier came out and gave me a hand.”

  I felt ridiculously happy. I was terrified that he had been going to say he had done it himself.

  ***

  As I rode back the conversation with Sylvia kept recurring to me. The girls, naturally, were interested in everything that went on and because—being in that in-between stage, neither grown-up nor children—they saw through immature eyes, they did not always interpret correctly. Why had Alice written such a story? How far did imagination feed on facts? Was it possible that she had seen someone digging a hole in the copse? Or had Alice imagined it? Perhaps she—or one of the girls—had seen Napier coming back to the house with the gardening tools. That would be enough to fire Alice’s imagination; and because of the ruin in the copse and the light which had been seen there, the place had become one of mystery. Someone digging in the copse? Digging what? The imagination immediately supplied the answer: a grave.

  Was this how Alice had worked it out? Did she feel she should make this known, and was she afraid to? She was, I believed, a timid child. I felt certain that her mother had impressed upon her the need for good behavior that they both might keep their places at Lovat Stacy. Allegra was constantly reminding Alice of her inferior position as the housekeeper’s daughter and of the necessity of not making herself troublesome. Unkind Allegra! And yet she, too, was unsure of her position, so I suppose one should not judge her too harshly.

  I made up my mind that Alice had seen Napier with the gardening tools, had felt it her duty to put this on record, but was afraid of giving offense, so she wrote a story which was largely imagination, but which did say something of what she felt should be said. Alice wanted to do the right thing which was to tell what she knew; but as it was only a suspicion she dared not mention it openly. That was the answer.

  But suppose Edith was buried in the copse. And Roma? Where was Roma? They had to be somewhere.

  If someone had dug a grave in the copse, wouldn’t there be some sign of it? The grass would not be properly grown, so surely it should not be difficult to find a patch of newly disturbed earth.

  This was becoming not only sinister but gruesome. I remembered Mrs. Lincroft’s somewhat oblique warning. Don’t interfere. Interference could put you into danger.

  Edith had been murdered, and if her murderer was aware of my determination to discover him, then I was in danger. But I could not help it. I must find the answer.

  Having reached the copse I dismounted and tied my horse to a tree.

  I looked about me. How still it was! How eerie! But was that because of its associations? Through the trees I could glimpse the gray ruin and instinctively I moved toward it.

  The sun glinted through the trees throwing a shifting pattern on the ground. I thought once more: Surely if the earth had been disturbed recently it would show.

  I stared down at the grass which grew patchily.

  If one wanted to dig a grave this would be an ideal place to dig it. Here one would be hidden among the trees and perhaps hear the footsteps of anyone approaching. And if one were seen with the spade in one’s hand? “Oh, I have just been digging for someone who is unable to dig for himself…”

  “No!” I said and was surprised that I had spoken vehemently and aloud.

  As I drew level with the ruins I put out a hand and gingerly touched those stone walls. One day I promised myself when the light shows I’ll come down and see who is playing that little trick.

  I went through the gap in the stones where the door had been and stood there looking up at the sky through the damaged roof. My footsteps made a light noise on the broken tiled floor and the sound startled me. Yes, even by daylight I was a little frightened.

  I felt as though those gray walls blackened by the fire were shutting me in; I turned quickly and went out into the copse.

  If anyone had dug a hole, might he—or she—not have done so near those walls for since the place had the reputation of being haunted, people avoided it; perhaps it was just the sp
ot in which to dig a victim’s grave. And the light? Was that meant to keep people away from the spot? I felt I had to find a reason for all these strange happenings.

  I studied the earth near the wall. There was one patch without grass. I went down on my hands and knees to examine it more closely. And then…the crackle of undergrowth; the shadow looming over me.

  “Searching for something?”

  I gasped and standing up looked into Napier’s face. His voice was mocking but there was a deadly earnestness in his eyes and I knew he was angry.

  “I…I didn’t hear you until a second ago.”

  “What on earth are you doing? Praying? Or have you dropped something?”

  I said: “My brooch…”

  He touched the cameo at my throat. “It’s there…securely pinned.”

  “Oh, I thought…”

  I was making a bad job of it but I could not tell him that I—like everyone else—suspected him of murdering his wife. I didn’t suspect him. I hastily corrected that. I wanted to prove that he was innocent in face of all the calumnies.

  He stood, that sardonic smile on his face, not helping me out of my embarrassment at all.

  “I saw you from the distance at the Brancots’ cottage.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I know. Brancot told me you’d been complimenting him on the garden and that he’d told you I gave him a hand. You remember…seeing me come back with my spade?”

  “I remember.”

  He laughed. “Well, it’s brave of you to come to this place. It has such an evil reputation.”

  “In broad daylight?” I said, recovering my calm.

  “Well, if one is alone…”

  “But I am not.”

  “When you come to think of it, it is the fear of not being alone that makes people afraid.”

  “You mean they’re afraid of ghosts?”

  “You looked very startled when I came on you kneeling here. Perhaps you are a little uneasy now.” He took my wrist and with a mocking smile put his finger on my pulse. “A little too fast, I think,” he commented.