by Gary Gibson
‘But you didn’t find anything or anyone.’
He shook his head. ‘What I didn’t write,’ he emphasised, ‘for the sake of my journalistic integrity, was how utterly terrifying the whole experience was.’ He leaned forward in his chair, and fixed her with his gaze, his expression suddenly hard and flat. ‘Now tell me, were you telling the truth when you said Ashford doesn’t know you’re here?’
She blinked at him in surprise. ‘No, he doesn’t. I told you I’d be in trouble if he knew.’ She frowned. ‘You don’t actually think I’m spying on you, do you?’
‘He came very close to ruining me, Miss MacDonald. That makes me a little uncomfortable about answering questions for anyone associated with him. It’s also why I turned down the Fortean Times – the last thing I want to do is attract his attention. If I publish one single word about either him or Ashford Hall, his legal firm will come down on me like the proverbial ton of bricks.’
She stared at him, astonished. ‘I had no idea. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles or anything else you like I’m here purely out of my own interest.’
He glared at her for a few moments more, then appeared to relax again. ‘Very well,’ he said, his voice softer now. ‘Then I have a proposal. In return for answering your questions, you tell me the exact nature of your enquiries, and screw the NDA. In return, we’ll agree we never met or talked about any of this. Quid pro quo.’
‘I can’t do that. I told you, he’d sue me as well.’
Summerfield sighed and stood. ‘Then I’d like to thank you for your visit, but I’m afraid it’s over.’ He went to stand by the living-room door and extended a hand towards the hallway.
She sat there, hands screwed up in her lap, and listened to the clamour of voices in her head urging her to leave. ‘Fine,’ she said at last, collapsing back against the sofa. ‘Fact is,’ she muttered, ‘I don’t have much to lose at this point.’
He regarded her for a moment, then nodded and stepped over to a drinks cabinet near his desk, taking out a bottle of whisky and a pair of glasses. ‘A little of this might help bolster your clearly flagging spirits,’ he said, pouring her a glass and handing it over before making one for himself. ‘In fairness, the chances are excellent I won’t understand half of anything you tell me about your work.’
‘You might be right,’ she allowed. ‘But if we’re going to do this, why don’t you go first – why did Ashford cause you so much trouble?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I may have implied in my book that his alibi was less than bulletproof.’
She nodded. ‘Someone saw him riding around on his motorbike.’
‘No,’ Summerfield corrected her, ‘someone wearing all-concealing leathers and a helmet was seen riding around on a motorbike the same model and colour as Ashford’s.’
‘But it could have been anyone. That’s how I read it anyway.’
‘I had a very good lawyer who argued that exact same point, Miss MacDonald, but, while Ashford’s pockets are deep, mine are not.’
‘So,’ she asked, ‘was he in Wardenby when Clara Ward died?’
Summerfield’s manner became cagey. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘Maxim Bernard is highly regarded in his field, even by those who clump him together with the table-knockers. Why not go to him?’
‘I know one of his assistants. I’ve spoken to her about this. But you were at Ashford Hall decades before they were, and clearly you’re the expert on the subject.’
‘And how do the EVP’s relate to your work?’
‘I’m building a... a kind of radio,’ she explained. ‘A highly experimental one that involves sending information back in time.’
He stared at her. ‘What, a bloody time machine?’
She was starting to get tired of people calling it a time machine. ‘Not exactly. It has to do with quantum mechanics –’
He put out a hand to stop her. ‘Spare me the details. What does this have to do with ghostly recordings?’
‘I don’t know that it has anything to do with them,’ she replied. ‘But I heard an EVP that implies our machine somehow caught a random piece of conversation from inside the laboratory where it’s kept and, in some way I don’t understand, sent it backwards in time.’
‘To where?’
‘To Ashford Hall, before it was rebuilt.’
Summerfield’s expression became thunderstruck. ‘Am I to understand you think EVP’s are actually messages from the future?’
‘Well, from the present,’ she corrected him. ‘But that obviously doesn’t account for all of them,’ she added, thinking of that voice whispering to her in the room where Clara had died. ‘Just the ones from the Halls.’ And maybe not all of those either, she reminded herself, taking a drink of the whisky. She felt it burn away some of the chill in her belly.
‘What led you to this conclusion?’ he asked, clearly fascinated.
‘The EVP I heard directly referenced the experiments I’ve been carrying out.’
He looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose a physics experiment might make for a more rational explanation than the restless dead.’
She nodded. ‘To be honest, I came here hoping you’d tell me the EVP’s are a load of rubbish.’ She eyed him carefully. ‘But that’s not the feeling I get from you.’
‘Well, you said yourself that you could only account for some EVP’s. What about the rest?’
‘That’s where it gets really weird,’ she said. ‘It’s certainly possible, hypothetically speaking, that some of the EVP’s recorded in the vicinity of the Halls could be snatches of conversation somehow transmitted into the past. They’re just information – they’re not alive, so there’s no way for them to directly interact with anyone.’ Summerfield nodded. ‘But the other day, someone – or something – seemed to speak directly to me.’
‘What did it say?’
‘It was saying my name. And then it said He’ll kill me.’ She shuddered, wishing she had an excuse to ask for another whisky. ‘Over and over again.’
‘Where exactly did you hear this?’
‘Maxim Bernard had miked up the room where Clara Ward died. I happened to go in there without being aware of its history or even that the place was supposed to be haunted.’
Summerfield studied his own whisky for several seconds before speaking. ‘When, exactly?’
‘Last Friday. I... thought I heard a voice behind me when I was in the room, but when I turned around there was no one there. I heard nothing else at the time.’ She put her whisky glass down carefully on the edge of the coffee table. ‘Then Metka – that’s one of Bernard’s assistants – played me back what their mikes had picked up in the room. My name, and the words Susan, he’ll kill me were buried deep in the static. I just about ran from the building when I heard it coming out of the speakers.’
‘I’m not surprised. Would you like to hear something equally scary, Miss MacDonald?’
She laughed weakly. ‘Not really, no.’
‘I’ve heard the name Susan before,’ he told her. ‘You’re in more than one of the EVP’s. Do the words “beauty and the beast” mean anything to you?’
He must have seen something in her face, for he nodded with apparent satisfaction before she could formulate an answer.
She picked up her glass and drained the last of her whisky. ‘Metka – Bernard’s assistant – played me a recording with that phrase in it, along with my name.’
‘Does the phrase “beauty and the beast” have some special significance to you?’
She nodded. ‘Very much so, yes.’
‘I see.’ He swivelled in his chair to face his computer. He touched the mouse and the screen came to life. ‘Before we speak any further, I’d like to play you something.’
Oh God. ‘Is it another EVP?’ she asked, knowing with dreadful certainty that it must be.
He nodded. ‘This won’t take a moment.’
She put down the empty glass and gripped her knees. Static filled the living-room, Summerfield slowly increasing the
volume much as Metka had, until she could feel a low rumble transmit itself through the sofa’s springs.
Before long she could just about make out a voice, tremulous but clearly feminine, and surprisingly clear for all the static. Each statement sounded like a whisper, and at times she looked over at Summerfield, thinking it was over, just for the voice to return again.
Susan
Ask Susan
The bracelet
I put it in his hand
You don’t know how much it took
It’s all his fault
I didn’t know about beauty and the beast
Ask Susan
She’ll come looking for you, David
The bracelet is all I had of me.
It was too much. She caught sight of Summerfield’s shocked expression as she darted out of the living-room, just making it to the front door before yanking it open and vomiting onto a rose bush situated beneath a window. He heard him come hurrying after her, and felt something soft pressed into her hand.
‘Dear God,’ he said. ‘I was worried it might unnerve you, but I never thought...!’
She took the napkin from him and pressed it against her mouth with shaking hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what happened.’
‘I frightened the daylights out of you, is what happened,’ said Summerfield. He touched one hand gently to her shoulder. ‘I’m so very sorry. Please, come back in, at least so we can finish.’
She regarded him with alarm. ‘There’s more?’
‘Of the recording?’ He shook his head. ‘No, you’ll be glad to know. Here. Allow yourself to clean up a little.’
He guided her through to his toilet, where she washed her face and hands and looked at her pale skin before going back to join him in his living-room.
‘I’d give you another whisky,’ he said, ‘but I know you have to drive back.’
‘That’s perfectly fine.’ She lowered herself carefully back onto the sofa.
‘Now you understand why I was so keen to meet you,’ said Summerfield. ‘That damn voice has – if you’ll pardon the expression – haunted me for years. Then out of nowhere I get a phone call from a woman named Susan, who’s working at Ashford Hall, which was still just a ruin until a year ago, wanting to know about the EVPs. So naturally...’
‘I understand. Look, my research involves two communications devices, one here and one in California, codenamed Beauty and Beast. The Beast lives in Ashford Hall. It’s a quantum communications array of a highly experimental nature.’
He stared at her with hungry fascination. ‘I was present when that recording I just played you was made. You can imagine how I reacted when it was played back to me and I heard my own name.’
‘The bracelet,’ she said, standing suddenly. It mentioned the bracelet.
Summerfield blinked at her in surprise. ‘It means something to you?’
She ran back out to her car without any further explanation, carefully avoiding looking at the rose bush on the way out and back again. She’d left the bracelet sitting on the dash after her encounter with the librarian. She brought it back in and gave it to Summerfield, who stared down at it in his hand.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
‘A bracelet. I found it in the room where Clara died.’
‘My God,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s as real as Beauty and Beast,’ she told him.
He chuckled quietly. ‘My God,’ he said again. ‘My hands are shaking.’
‘I heard workmen making a racket – or what I thought was workmen, but when I went to look there was no one there. I had no idea who Clara Ward was at the time or what had happened to her. The floorboards had been pulled up, and my shoe fell between the joists. I found the bracelet stuck between them, out of sight.’
Summerfield looked up from where he’d been turning the bracelet this way and that in his hands. ‘Who else has seen this?’
‘No one.’
He peered more closely at it, holding it up to the light. ‘There’s something written here...’
‘“CA & CW”,’ she told him.
‘So it does,’ he muttered, and lowered it again. ‘Good Lord – it must have been down there all this time.’
‘I thought perhaps CA might stand for Christian Ashford, and CW for Clara Ward.’
‘Or Claire,’ he said, looking over at her.
Susan blinked, sensing that she’d missed something. ‘Claire?’
‘The sisters do have the same initials, Miss MacDonald.’
Susan put her hand to her mouth. ‘Wasn’t there something in your book about Ashford being involved with both of them?’
‘There were certainly rumours,’ he said, passing the bracelet back over. ‘I heard them from some of the same people who told me they’d seen him on his motorbike, riding away from Ashford Hall on the night in question.’
‘Then... Why didn’t they speak up about it?’
Summerfield’s expression was grim. ‘Christian Ashford was a young man with prospects, Doctor MacDonald, sitting on a trust fund worth millions. Enough to buy their silence.’
‘Then... You think he had something to do with Clara’s death?’
Summerfield returned her a tight smile, as if to indicate that was the most he was prepared to say on that subject.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘So what happened to Claire Ward? I don’t recall you mentioning her much after the séance.’
‘She still lives near Wardenby. Last I heard, she worked in the library.’
Shit. She’d forgotten about the librarian. ‘There’s something I need to tell you...’ She quickly summarised the events in Wardenby’s library.
He nodded once she’d finished. ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘you should go to her and ask if the inscription refers to her, or her sister.’
Susan opened her mouth to respond, then hesitated. Summerfield’s eyebrows drew close together as he waited for her to respond.
‘You don’t want to, do you?’ he said at last. ‘Why not?’
She didn’t answer. Summerfield shifted in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Perhaps I should go and ask her,’ he said. ‘Or even go to the police with it. That bracelet could be the most significant development in a case that’s been closed for over thirty years.’
‘No,’ she said, holding the bracelet tight in her lap. ‘Please. I – I need time to verify whether or not there’s some clear, causal link between the EVP’s and the quantum arrays. If there is, it could be one of the most important scientific discoveries in decades. But if there’s any kind of investigation, I have no way of knowing what might happen to Ashford Hall or my experiment.’ She had visions of police tape blocking the building entrance.
‘Except Claire Ward already knows about the bracelet,’ Summerfield reminded her. ‘For all we know, she’s already talked to the police about it. And then where does that leave you?’
‘You said yourself the case has been closed for years. I only need a few more days to run some more tests, then I’ll hand the damn thing in myself. Besides, it might have lain there forever if I hadn’t stumbled across it when I did.’
‘Then I suppose,’ said Summerfield, standing now, ‘that the decision rests with you. I can’t say I envy you, Miss MacDonald.’ She could see from his expression that he didn’t approve of what she was doing.
‘Thank you for speaking to me,’ she said, standing as well. ‘And thank you for playing me that recording.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, extending a hand, ‘for resolving a mystery that’s been stuck with me for years. I want very much to know how things work out. If you could keep in touch, I would very much appreciate it.’
‘Of course.’ She walked to the front door. ‘Will you promise me you won’t say anything to anyone about the bracelet?’
He nodded. ‘You have my word. But if too much time passes, expect to get a reminder from me. You can’t hold on to it forever.’
‘Of course
.’ She dug her hand into her pocket and searched for her keys. A new idea was forming in her mind. ‘I understand that.’
Summerfield pulled the door open. ‘One last word of advice before you go. Secrets have a habit of coming up behind you and stabbing you in the back when you least expect it.’
By the time she had guided her car through the centre of Great Yarmouth, the idea that had been forming in her head coalesced and grew. When she stopped to check her messages and get some lunch, she saw that Metka had finally replied. Susan called her straight back and explained what she had in mind, then got onto the motorway and drove to Wardenby as fast as she could go without getting herself arrested.
Susan paused before getting out of the car at Ashford Hall. She had put the bracelet back on top of the dash, and she stared at it, thinking of all the things Summerfield had said. She picked it up and pushed it into a pocket, then grabbed her rucksack along with a plastic bag full of newspapers she’d picked up after lunch.
She found Metka waiting for her at the reception desk – unmanned, of course, both Pat and Dan having now quit.
‘You have them all?’ Susan asked her.
Metka patted a laptop bag slung over one shoulder. ‘Complete archives of Arthur Melville,’ she replied. ‘Many more than are available to the public, along with transcripts of each.’ She looked puzzled. ‘I’m not sure I completely understand what it is you have in mind.’
‘Doing is better than explaining,’ said Susan, leading her up the steps to the upper floor. ‘Just to be clear – how many EVP recordings are there altogether from Ashford Hall?’
‘Almost one hundred and fifty,’ Metka replied.
Susan’s steps nearly faltered in her astonishment. ‘That many? I had no idea.’
‘There is a reason why Ashford Hall is so infamous,’ Metka reminded her.
‘The more the merrier, I guess,’ said Susan as she unlocked the door of her laboratory. Neither Andrew nor Rajam were there – they’d have the place to themselves, as she’d hoped. ‘Did you bring the camera?’
Metka nodded. She opened her bag and pulled out first a Dell laptop and then a small handheld video camera, placing them side by side on a table.