The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Shakespeare probably wrote more than thirty-seven plays—’

  ‘It’s difficult to separate legend from reality about the Holzminden sketches,’ said Nell, so focused on the subject that she hardly heard Michael’s remark. ‘A great many authorities maintain they never existed. That they’re only a myth. But if you’ve found one— Are you sure it’s a POW camp in the sketch? Not a hospital?’

  ‘Well, there are bars at the windows and even some German soldiers peering through them at the prisoners. Oh, and there’s an engraving or a painting on one of the walls – a slightly stylized outline of a black eagle, wings spread, claws out.’

  ‘The German Imperial emblem,’ said Nell eagerly. ‘Michael, if that sketch is real, it would be a tremendous discovery. I’ll see what I can find out about it.’

  ‘Don’t spend too much time on it. I shouldn’t think it’s the genuine article, and in any case it’s not likely to be for sale.’

  ‘I’d like to turn up some details, though,’ she said. ‘It’ll be a good project while you’re away, and while Beth’s in Scotland with Brad’s aunts.’

  ‘Have you heard from her? Is she enjoying herself?’

  ‘She’s having a whale of a time and the aunts are thoroughly spoiling her. When she phoned this afternoon, she said she was going to buy a kilt for you and a tartan bow for Wilberforce.’

  ‘God help us all.’ Michael had a sudden irresistible picture of Wilberforce indignantly adorned with a tartan bow. He said, ‘Is everything all right there?’

  ‘Yes, everything’s fine. Listen, though, I’d better ring off, because I’ve arranged to borrow a couple of books from next door for Owen – Great War stuff that he thinks might be useful for J.B.’s book. He’s calling round shortly to take a look at them. So I’ll see if there’s anything about Holzminden at the same time. Shall I email anything to you?’

  ‘There’s no Internet connection here and the signal isn’t brilliant on the phone, either. I’ll be back in a couple of days anyway. But if the sketch is genuine, I do wonder how it got here.’

  ‘Never mind how it got there, if it’s genuine, I wonder if Luisa Gilmore knows what she’s got,’ said Nell.

  ‘And if she’d let you sell it on her behalf?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Michael replaced the phone and, before he could forget, made some notes for a new Wilberforce chapter, in which Wilberforce found himself in Scotland, becoming entangled with a set of bagpipes, which the ever-inventive mice had booby-trapped. He would email the idea to Beth when he got back to Oxford, and they would have one of the sessions they both enjoyed, working out how it could be written, and what Wilberforce’s eventual fate might be.

  Going downstairs he realized he was deliberately ignoring the Holzminden sketch, and he was so annoyed with himself that he deliberately stopped in front of it and inspected it again. But it did not seem to have any further information to give, and when he unhooked it to examine the back, there was only a sheet of brown paper, glued to the edges of the frame. Michael was aware of such a strong compulsion to tear the paper off to see what might lie underneath that it took a considerable effort to replace the sketch.

  He collected his coffee from the kitchen and carried it into the library. There was a degree of reassuring familiarity about the room, and it was nicely warm. Once the table lamp and an old-fashioned standard lamp had been plugged in and switched on, pools of soft light lay across the piles of books, picking out gilt lettering here and there on a calf or leather spine. Michael opened the laptop and reached for the Palestrina file. He was finding it difficult not to keep remembering Luisa’s moment of evident fear at supper, or her violent repudiation of the possibility that someone could be walking through the garden.

  She did hear it, though, thought Michael. I know she did, because I heard it too. And I heard someone trying the door. No, I didn’t. It was birds in the eaves or water chugging down the guttering, that’s all.

  He set Stephen Gilmore’s letter to one side and began to sort through the top layer of the file. There was a remarkable diversity of stuff: letters and notes, concert programmes, a few dog-eared photographs with nothing to show who the people in them were or where the photos had been taken, old receipts and bills that might have nothing to do with the subject in hand, but that were interesting in their own way.

  As he made his own notes, there were sounds that the storm was returning. Rain lashed against the windows and the old house seemed to be filling up with rustlings and whispering draughts. Several times the curtains stirred, making Michael jump and look quickly over his shoulder.

  It was interesting to speculate how some of the papers he was finding had reached Fosse House. He turned up what appeared to be a letter to one of the nuns at the Liége Sacré-Coeur convent. How had this found its way from Liège to this remote corner of England? It was written in French, of course; Michael was aware that the French spoken in Belgium varied from region to region, but as far as he could make out, this seemed to be the straightforward form of the language – it was ‘French’ French. His knowledge of the language was patchy and also somewhat rusty, but he thought he could get the gist of it.

  My dear Sister Clothilde … Permit me to express the appreciation of those of us fortunate enough to attend the beautiful concert by your Choir at Saint Jacques’ Church last month … This was fairly easy to translate, but there followed what Michael thought were technical musical terms, which were beyond his ability. Then the writer went on to say something about how the music would have gladdened – or it might be delighted – Signor Palestrina’s heart. He would have much enjoyed listening to his own Nunc Dimittis and the Kyrie … Also, the Bach Cantata were beautifully sung.

  More incomprehensible details, presumably about the music, followed this, together with a spattering of names of people who had attended, but it was the closing paragraph that made Michael blink and look along the shelves for a French–English dictionary. Surely there would be one here …? Yes, there it was, battered and dog-eared, but perfectly serviceable. He seized it gratefully and returned to the big desk.

  The letter-writer talked about caché and l’écran and si triste. Caché was hidden, of course, and triste was sad. But what was écran? He turned over the dictionary’s pages. Here it was. Écran was screen. Which meant the closing sentence said, more or less, So sad that the chorus must always be hidden behind screens. Michael frowned and traced the final few sentences with the help of the dictionary. However, there is an ancient and honourable tradition for their kind, dating back to Vivaldi, I believe. I am glad (or was that delighted again?) to have your assurance that your own girls continue to submit with docility to this …

  Four

  Michael stared at the letter. So the girls of the Palestrina Choir, in their remote convent, had been hidden behind screens when they sang. Why? To protect their innocence from lascivious masculine eyes? Had Leonora Gilmore been among them? But the concert had been in a church, for goodness’ sake, and the Choir had presumably been chaperoned as diligently as a clutch of Regency maidens. And the letter-writer referred to the girls as ‘always’ having to be hidden, which suggested the practice was part of the normal routine of their day. Had there been something wrong with them? Physically? Mentally? Luisa had said Leonora’s childhood had been unhappy – was there a clue there? Probably he was making much out of little. Still, he would look out that reference to Vivaldi; there might be a lead there he could follow.

  He emptied another of the envelopes from the box. It seemed to contain mostly old letters and a few curling newspaper cuttings, and it looked as if some Gilmore boy had attended Charterhouse, because there were a number of smudgily-printed notices about various school events, and alumni newsletters. Michael flipped through these, not seeing anything relevant. He was about to close the file when a letter clipped to one notice caught his eye. It dated from the early 1920s and was addressed to ‘Dear old Boots’ and signed ‘Chuffy’. It referred to the two o
f them having been at Charterhouse in the years prior to the Great War and expressed a hope that Boots might toddle along to the next Old Carthusian bash on the grounds that it would do him, Boots, a great deal of good to get away from his books for a while. Chuffy wrote:

  All work and no play. And I know your cousin, Stephen, was at the old place a few years ahead of us. What happened to him? I heard one or two odd tales about him, but I hope he came through the War all right. We lost a lot of good chaps, didn’t we? I’m sure I remember Stephen being a chum of Robert Graves. I’m afraid some of the chaps bullied Graves a bit – we all thought he was mad, and it was only later I heard he feigned all that mad stuff as a defence against the bullying. I think some of the others felt a bit rotten about that. For all his strangeness Graves came through the War all right though, and I know he wrote some cracking poetry, not that I’m much of a one for poetry; I can never understand the half of it. I think Stephen came in for some of the bullying, as well – didn’t he try to run away one term, saying later that the only place he felt safe was his home in the Fens? But then the beaks put him and Graves in the choir and that seemed to calm them both down.

  There followed mentions of several pieces of music which the Charterhouse choir had sung, but about which Chuffy had only imperfect recollection, not being much of a one for music – ‘you know me, old boy’. The music in question was largely Handel and Vivaldi with, according to Chuffy, ‘stuff by some cove called Tallis that mixed all the different voices in together, but in a perfectly lovely way, like eating Neapolitan ice-cream or those layered pastries at Selfridges. Anyway, old bean, if Stephen is still around, perhaps he’d like to come along to the next bunfight with us’.

  Michael liked Chuffy’s breezy bonhomie, and since Robert Graves had been a notable War poet, he listed the composers against Graves’ name as possible influences. It was sad to read about Graves having feigned insanity to beat off school bullying.

  ‘They said, years later, that it was from Robert I got the idea of pretending to be mad … But they didn’t understand that there were those of us for whom madness was a reality …’

  The words lay like cobwebs on the air and Michael turned sharply to look at the room. He’s got in, he thought. He’s found a way in. Stephen, are you here? But there was no one in the room, and after a moment he went to the window and pulled back the curtain slightly, careful to stand back so he could not be seen. Was someone out there? He could not see any movements, but the rain was still falling and it was impossible to be sure.

  The carriage clock over the fireplace chimed ten and somewhere in the house a door opened and closed. Luisa called out that she was just locking up and would bid him goodnight.

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Michael, wondering if he should offer to help with the locking up. But she probably had her own routine, so he closed the library door. There was the sound of the bolts being drawn across the main door. He can’t get in now, he thought.

  It was twenty past ten and Michael thought he, too, would call it a night. Normally, he would not be thinking of going to bed for another hour at least, but it had been a long drive, and Fosse House had sprung a few surprises. It was remarkable that in all the wealth of fictional and factual or speculative literature about ghosts, no one mentioned how exhausting it was to encounter them – or, at least, to encounter something approximating to them. Even if Fosse House’s spooks turned out to be nothing more than creaking roof timbers, Michael felt as if he had run a ten-mile marathon. That being so, he would go up to bed now, then make an early start in the morning.

  A low light was burning on the stairs, and Michael went quietly along to his bedroom, pleased to discover the radiator had ticked its way to a fair degree of warmth.

  But although the room was warm and the bed itself deep and soft, the wind was still whipping across the Fens and Michael kept thinking he could hear whispering voices inside it. By half-past eleven he was still wide awake and wondering whether to go down to the library to see if there was any relatively light reading on the shelves. But perhaps that would disturb Luisa. He refused to acknowledge that he did not want to walk through this house at such an hour, punched his pillow, and lay down again.

  The clock had crawled round to midnight, and he was at last sliding into the hinterlands of sleep, when he was jerked awake by a sound that was neither the keening wind, nor even glugging plumbing. It was the sound he had heard earlier – the sound of the front door being rattled. He’s trying again, thought Michael with horror. He didn’t get in earlier, and so he’s come back because he thinks everyone is in bed. I’ll have to do something – alert Luisa – phone the police.

  He pulled a sweater over his pyjamas, thrust his feet into shoes and opened his bedroom door. He was not going to engage in any single-handed heroics, but he could at least go as far as the galleried part of the landing and look down into the hall from above.

  The wind was still gusting angrily at the windows, causing the worn frames to rattle like dry, dead bones. The drapes at the long windows stirred as if invisible hands clutched at them, and Michael, reaching the landing, saw with relief that the low light was still burning, so that at least this would not be the classic walk through the dark old house. He peered cautiously over the rail. The dim light sent shadows chasing across the floor of the vast hall below, and the trees immediately outside the windows moved their branches back and forth. It was absurd to think their shadows were forming into the outline of a human figure – a figure that was trying to get into the house to be safe …

  He went down the stairs and across the hall. The thick old door was still and silent, the heavy bolts in place. Michael put his hand on the surface and felt it creak slightly. Old timbers. Old frame, probably badly-fitting after so many years. Nothing more.

  Two narrow windows flanked the door, each with a padded window seat, and Michael went to the nearer one and knelt on the faded velvet, peering out. The glass was old and slightly uneven, and rain streamed down it, distorting the view of the dark gardens beyond. Even so, he did not think anyone was out there. It’s all right, he thought. The house is locked and secured and it’s perfectly safe.

  ‘Safe … Yes, I always felt safe in this house …’

  Stephen, thought Michael, whipping round to scan the shadowy hall. But Stephen had been dead for nearly a century.

  He was about to return to his room when a new sound reached him, and something moved at the head of the stairway. Michael’s heart bumped into overdrive, because a figure had walked across the landing above him and was slowly descending the stairs. A figure in whose pallid face the eyes were deeply shadowed so that they resembled dark pits, and who walked with a curious uncoordinated gait as if propelled by some invisible force outside of its control.

  He stifled a gasp and instinctively pressed back into the concealment of the window alcove. But before his mind could form Stephen’s name and image again, a thin light fell across the figure and he saw that it was Luisa. Michael, his pulse-rate returning to near-normal, drew a deep breath of relief, and prepared to explain about investigating suspicious noises. Then he saw that no explanation was necessary. Luisa appeared to have no awareness of his presence or even to see him. She was not using the walking stick, and the dreadful puppet-like quality to her movements was unnerving. Her eyes were open, but they were glazed and staring straight ahead. She’s sleepwalking, thought Michael. That’s all this is.

  He had an idea that sleepwalkers should not be woken abruptly, so he remained where he was in the window recess, and waited. Luisa crossed the hall. She was dressed as she had been earlier in the evening – the plain dress with the woollen shawl held in place by a silver brooch. No ethereal, floating draperies for this one, thought Michael. Unseeing, unhearing, Luisa unhooked the chain across the door, then reached for the two bolts on the front door, and drew them back. There was a soft scrape of sound, and then the groan of the hinges as the door opened slightly. Night air, cold and rain sodden, gusted in, spattering mo
isture on the oak blocks of the floor. The dark shapes of the old trees lay across the oak, and for a moment Michael thought they formed into the outline of a man standing in the doorway. Then it was gone. Luisa closed the door, slid the bolts back, and replaced the security chain.

  She’s let him in, thought Michael. She heard him trying to get in, and she’s opened the door to him. There was no one there, but Luisa thought there was, and she thinks she let him. In a minute she’ll go quietly back up to bed.

  But Luisa did not. She went to a small bureau in a corner of the hall and from a drawer took what Michael, narrowing his eyes in the uncertain light, saw was a key. Still moving slowly, Luisa went to a section of the panelling, and Michael saw for the first time that a small door was set into the wood: not a concealed or a secret door, simply a door that was so much part of the wood that it was almost unnoticeable. Luisa unlocked it, pushed it open and stepped through.

  Michael stared at the dark oblong. He was uncertain what he should do, but perhaps he ought to make sure Luisa was all right before going back to bed.

  The door in the panelling was slightly ajar; beyond it was a flight of stone steps, in semi-darkness. Of course there would be shadowy stone steps, thought Michael, wryly. What else is ever behind a low door in a wall? Do I go down those steps? Oh hell, why not? All he wanted to do was make sure there was nothing down there that might pose a threat. Like the shadowy figure of a man with a blown-leaf scar …?