by Neil Spring
It was pitiful, like watching a child perform for attention.
‘Marianne,’ Foyster cried, getting slowly to his feet. ‘Look now, you see what you’ve done – you’ve set her off!’
‘Set her off?’
‘My wife, sir, is prone to bouts of hysteria. Is it any wonder with all of this to contend with—’
I was about to go to the woman’s aid when an appalling series of crashes sounded from the hall. ‘What on earth?’
With unwise impetuousness, we all hurried to the door. Glass bottles flew past our faces. One hurled down from above, another came flying down the stairs and crashed at our feet, the glass shattering this way and that.
‘Where are they coming from?’ I gasped. ‘Who’s throwing them?’
‘You see now!’ cried Mrs Foyster. ‘You see it is true. God save us all.’
‘Get back,’ said Price over the turmoil, and we did so. Indeed, I ducked down behind him. Only Mrs Foyster departed the scene, breaking out of the drawing room and bolting across the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom.
‘Marianne!’ the old rector cried out. Then he looked down, crestfallen and muttered, mostly to himself, ‘Now there will be trouble.’
My heart was pounding, my hands trembling. I called desperately to Price for help.
‘Come here,’ he said soothingly, gathering me up in his arms. I was safe.
And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the disturbance ceased, and all was still and calm as before. Except for a single pebble that appeared as if from nowhere, skipped across the floor and bounced off the skirting board at the bottom of the stairs before rolling to a halt.
Foyster stood, trembling, then said gravely as if to himself, ‘Is this my punishment? Is this what I am doomed to endure?’
I started. Punishment for what?
‘Forgive me,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘It’s this dreadful house. It plays the most terrible tricks on you.’
‘Houses don’t play tricks, Reverend Foyster,’ said Price, ‘but people most certainly do!’
And then he was at the nearest window, peering out as if some movement had caught his eye. He looked back at me. ‘Check on Mrs Foyster,’ he instructed.
I did so, following the route she had taken up to the first floor, while Price and Foyster began a thorough search of the downstairs rooms, diligently checking every door and window. I went first along the passage, past the wall writing, to the nursery to check that the young girl was still asleep. I was amazed to see that she was, and the sight calmed me.
But not for long; for no sooner had I closed her bedroom door and released a small sigh of relief than I noticed, next to the door frame, a set of markings that had not been present on our first inspection: a pattern of lines which reminded me of a crest – a royal emblem perhaps. Adjacent to these markings was a word, and it was clear as before: TROMPEE.
Somewhere in the bowels of the house a servant bell rung.
I need to get out of here now, I told myself, looking ahead of me, down the long, dark passage that led to the landing and the stairs to the hall. But before I could move an inch a piercing scream issued forth from the far end of the corridor. From the Foysters’ bedroom.
I bolted forward, shouting Marianne’s name. When I reached the door I found it locked. I threw my weight at it again and again until finally it burst open and I stumbled into the room. ‘Mrs Foyster, I—’
The sight before me stopped me dead.
Mrs Foyster lay on the bed, her left eye swelling and red, her lip bleeding. Towering over her was a stout, dark-haired, thuggish looking man.
I recognised him immediately.
It was the man who had approached me earlier that night, alone on the station platform; the man who had followed us into our carriage and watched as I spoke to Price. The watcher.
Before I could think what to say the assailant bolted past me, out onto the landing and down the stairs, slamming the front door behind him.
‘Quickly, close the door!’ implored Mrs Foyster in a hoarse voice.
I did so, quite horrified. She stared at me blankly, silently.
Eventually I asked, ‘Who was that man?’
She cleared her throat. ‘Why don’t you pull up a chair, Miss Grey? I think perhaps I should explain.’
* * *
Notes
1 For a detailed account of the ‘Great Amherst Mystery’ see Poltergeist Over England, pp. 28–30.
2 According to Harry Price, the guests who visited the Foysters included Sir George and Lady Whitehouse, Mrs Richards, Miss May Walker, Miss Gordon, Mrs Wildgoose (née Dytor), Edwin Whitehouse, Mr L’Estrange, Mr d’Arles and Captain Deane.
– 23 –
MARIANNE’S WARNING
‘Who was that?’ I asked again.
‘Just a friend,’ she said.
‘Mrs Foyster, forgive me but none of my friends behave in such a manner. Look at you – you’re bleeding!’
Rising uncertainly from the bed, she fetched a robe from the wardrobe and slipped it on. Then she sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed beside me. I thought she looked lost, and in spite of her thinly disguised coldness towards me, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for this wounded woman.
‘It is a depressingly subjugated position we occupy in life, is it not, Miss Grey?’ she said quietly, looking down into her lap.
I didn’t understand, and politely told her so.
‘We – women, I mean: such lonely little lives we lead, don’t you find?’ She sighed deeply and lifted her gaze to meet mine. ‘The man you just met is our lodger. His name is Frank Peerless.’
‘Lodger? But I thought only you, Lionel, the child and your maid lived here.’
‘We haven’t lied to you, Miss Grey. Frank lives in the cottage next door.1 He pays us rent, attends to our needs. You met him, I understand, earlier this evening on your way here, at the station.’
‘I thought he was following me.’
‘How silly! Frank makes the journey from London every day. He has a flower stall outside one of the London cemeteries.’
‘What was he doing in here?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer. ‘Why did he strike you?’
Mrs Foyster drew a tissue from a box next to the bed and dabbed her bloody lip carefully. ‘You needn’t be concerned for my well-being, Miss Grey. I can assure you, Frank is perfectly harmless.’ She paused. ‘I must remind you that you have signed an agreement of confidentiality regarding anything you see or hear in this house.’
‘That is correct,’ I said, though in fact it was Price who had signed the agreement, not me. But she seemed satisfied, for she promptly tucked herself beneath her bedcovers and propped herself up with pillows like a child preparing for a bedtime story. I had the strongest impression that here was a woman who had not enjoyed the company of another female for a long while. She wanted to talk.
‘Frank can get a little excitable at times; he loses control. But it’s nothing more than that.’ She touched her wound again and flinched. ‘Things got slightly out of hand, that’s all. That happens sometimes. I’m sure you understand, being a woman of the world.’ She saw my confusion. ‘Really, you shouldn’t think badly of him. He is perfectly … acceptable. Or at least,’ she added with a grin, ‘I find him so.’
‘But your husband—’
‘Lionel knows all about it,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘He pretends he doesn’t, but really, he knows. Men are awfully good at covering their feelings, don’t you find? It gives them dignity and a sense of power, pretending they can’t see when actually they can. Especially when it hurts them the most.’
There was something chillingly calculating in her tone. I sat back, amazed that she had been so candid with me.2 Of course, I knew there were women like her. They were the talk of parlour rooms the length and breadth of London – scarlet women.
‘Oh, don’t look at me like that,’ she said defensively. ‘I told you, Lionel doesn’t mind. In fact, I think in a way he rather enj
oys it. Do you know how long we’ve been married?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Ten years.’
‘A lifetime.’
Her face hardened at my sarcasm. ‘I can see you don’t approve, Miss Grey.’
‘It isn’t for me to judge.’
‘And yet that is precisely what you are doing. I can see so much, Miss Grey, even the things you cannot …’ Her unsettling gaze held me. It seemed to linger around my neckline before floating back up to meet my eyes. She reached for a cigarette and there followed the scrape and flare of a match. ‘You must understand, every so often this terrible urge comes upon me, and it’s overwhelming. I don’t suppose I should say that I am incapable of resisting men, but in these cycles I become quite desperate. Hungry for it.’ I saw her arm move suggestively beneath the bedclothes. ‘Have you never felt that?’
I shook my head. Then, in a manner that was noticeably more cordial, she asked me how well acquainted I was with Price. I said that I knew him very well but that this was hardly surprising given that he was my employer and had been for five years.
‘But you’d like to know him much better than that, wouldn’t you?’
It was like talking to a coarse teenager, and when I refused to answer the question she closed her eyes wearily. ‘I understand, Sarah. Really I do. As I said, I can see everything.’ Her eyes snapped open and once again her gaze settled on my neckline.
What was she looking at?
‘But you must appreciate,’ she continued, ‘sometimes I feel I am dying in this house. It suffocates me with its perpetual melancholy. I’m entitled to some excitement, aren’t I? I yearn for the bright lights of London, Sarah, the rush of the place, and instead I get this. Look at me! I’m stuck out here in the wilderness.’
‘And Frank gives you excitement?’
‘Yes, in many ways,’ she said with a smirk. ‘Imagine how it is for me every day: getting up, clearing up after Lionel, ensuring he takes his medicine, tending to his needs. He knocks everything over and blames it on “them”, “the things”. It’s utterly pathetic.’
A thought struck her. ‘I say, you don’t suppose Lionel is responsible for some of the odd going-ons, do you? I’ve noticed that when he’s in his wheelchair things happen far less frequently. And some days he makes no sense at all, barricades himself away in that little chapel over the stairs, praying like an old fool. In his mind, everything is a sin!’
‘What does he pray for?’ I asked.
‘Forgiveness, I imagine,’ she said with resentment. ‘What I’m trying to say is, this isn’t my life, and it never was my life, never should have been.’
‘Then why did you come here?’
‘There was some trouble in Canada. Mr Price was right about that at least. I suppose you could say that we were running away, when I think about it now.’
‘Running from what exactly?’
‘Ourselves mostly, our darker natures. I suppose it was my fault mainly. Not all my fault, you understand; he played his part! And then some. But after that whole business … well, we had to move on.’
‘It concerned men?’ I asked.
‘Doesn’t it always?’ she said bitterly. ‘We had to come back. We had no money; as Lionel told you, we lost everything in the Crash. And now there’s nothing left. I’m all he has.’
‘So what you are saying is that you don’t love him.’
‘I have always loved him, Miss Grey. As I have loved all my husbands. But now … well, it’s more the sort of love that one feels for a brother or a friend. Can you understand that?’
All her husbands?
‘He wants me near him all the time, like some sort of doll. He can’t stand it if I’m away from the house, even if only for a few hours.’
She paused and looked at me with determination in her eyes. ‘But I will not be poor, Sarah.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Frank has a plan,’ she said. ‘He wants me to go with him to London. To start a business. Imagine that! Me, a businesswoman! A chance to start again.’
‘Mrs Foyster, a moment ago you used the expression “all my husbands”. What did you mean by that?’
‘I suppose you might say I have a chequered past,’ she said carefully, ‘but that applies to most of us, doesn’t it, Miss Grey?’
I looked away. ‘You had more than one husband?’
Silence.
‘Did Lionel know you were once married to someone else?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Were you divorced?’
She shook her head. This I could not believe. ‘How old were you when you met Lionel?’
Her mouth fixed in a horrible grin. ‘I was seven.’
If she had intended to shock me then she had succeeded. She looked at me the way a child might study an insect, analysing my reaction, assessing her skills in manipulation. It sickened me.
‘Oh please, there’s no need to look so alarmed,’ she said. ‘Lionel baptised me when I was seven – that was when we first met. As I grew up, he stayed in touch, until eventually—’
‘He proposed marriage.’
‘Exactly.’
And now I understood why earlier that night Mrs Foyster had prevented her husband from going upstairs to check on little Adelaide unaccompanied. He had been drawn to Marianne as a child. I felt sick. But I wasn’t leaving until I had learned more about the mystery that had brought me back here. ‘Tell me about the nun,’ I said. ‘The Dark Woman.’
Marianne gave me a long look and said rather nonchalantly, ‘What of her?’
‘Is she real?’
‘I have seen her outside, near the summerhouse, a dark figure with head bowed. Yes, she is real; she is spoken of often enough, isn’t she?’
‘Harry seems to think that you might share some sort of connection with her,’ I suggested. ‘Some psychic bond.’
‘How observant of him. Heavens, my name is written all over the walls!’
‘And you think those words are messages from the nun?’
‘Either that or they are the deranged inventions of my husband.’
‘Then if it is the nun, what do you suppose she wants?’ I asked.
‘Everything suggests that she is Catholic: the word “Mass” on the walls, and the fact that when Miss Ethel saw her she was telling her beads.’
All of this made sense. ‘What else?’
‘I feel such an impression of violence in this house. I can sense it. Violence from long ago.’ She hesitated. ‘The word trompée is important … I think it means that the nun who walks these grounds was deceived by someone during her lifetime, here perhaps, at a house that once stood on this site. I sense that she didn’t come here of her own free will – she was brought here from France.’
‘Sense?’ I repeated the word back to her. ‘You speak with such conviction.’
‘Lionel and I have found a number of ancient French artefacts about the house that would confirm the idea, together with other items.’
‘Such as?’
‘A French dictionary, for one. We found it on the first floor landing, just outside the Blue Room. Also a small gold ring – a wedding ring, I imagine – and some brass medallions inscribed with French and Latin.’
Medallions. Like the one found on Price’s pillow in the Blue Room? Even the reference to a French dictionary stirred a memory.
‘Trompée,’ she whispered.
‘What?’
But when she spoke next it was not with words, but single letters. ‘D-E-C-E … Deceived!’ she cried. ‘She was deceived. Yes, I feel certain that she was brought to England by a man who wanted her – someone important who betrayed her, deceived her, abandoned her, tortured and murdered her. She was escaping France and her life. She was promised the chance to start again, to start a new nunnery on her own. But he wanted her for his mistress and forced himself upon her. Such … such shame! She tore her medal off in shame.’ My hostess put her hands to her throat. ‘She’s here somewhere; her rem
ains are buried here, in or around the Rectory. She’s leaving clues for us, guiding us, warning us.’
‘Mrs Foyster?’ I took hold of her arm. ‘Tell me where you are getting this information.’
As she looked up at me, I felt as though she were capable of reaching into the innermost recesses of my mind, leafing through my thoughts as easily as one might browse through the pages of a book. She smiled at me knowingly. My skin crawled.
‘What are you really doing in this house, Miss Grey?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, I think you do. I think you understand very well indeed. You came back. You didn’t have to and yet you did. Why?’
‘For the sake of our research,’ I said. ‘This case has such … possibilities.’
Her face hardened. ‘No, this house possesses some personal significance for you. I can sense it: you’ve lost something.’
And then the most peculiar thing happened. The light in the room seemed to undergo a transformation. Shades of purple and black seeped into my vision, giving our surroundings an ethereal air.
‘I told you, I can see things, Sarah. I see things in my head, events long since passed and events yet to come. I’ve had the ability since I was a child.’
‘And what can you see now?’ I whispered, though I was afraid to hear her answer.
‘You, Sarah. I see you. A long time ago. Walking. It’s cold and black, and you’re walking somewhere with your mother. But you should have turned back. You should have turned back when you had the chance.’ Her hand flew to cover her mouth. ‘Dear God, you poor thing.’
I stood up, backing away from her with mounting fear. This was beyond my comprehension.
‘You think you’ve lost so much,’ she continued, ‘but the worst is yet to come.’
I shook my head and, between fitful breaths, cried out at her to stop.
‘The woman with two paths and one regret. There is a mark upon you.’
I froze. The words. I had heard them before.
‘This house sees all. The nun that haunts this place wants revenge upon the deceivers who walk these halls. Whoever they are, wherever they are. Mark my words, whoever explores this house, delves into its mysteries, pursues the Dark Woman, will turn mad and never again know what it means to live a restful life. They will be followed from this place, haunted. Cursed. They will suffer the worst death. A bad death.’