The Temple House Vanishing

by Rachel Donohue

  ‘There was also a fete being set up in the school that day, Christmas celebrations and such; it seemed the usual strict rules and controls had been relaxed. An air of confusion. They presumed it would be a minor scandal, easily handled if she came back by midnight,’ he said. ‘They always maintained Louisa was troubled, had struggled to settle; they never moved from their view that she had run away.’ He checked his watch as he finished speaking.

  ‘Do you think they knew more than they let on?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so. But that doesn’t mean they were complicit. However, they were masters at secrecy and it was a different time; maybe we didn’t ask all the right questions. They gave you the sense that something might have been going on with her and the teacher but would never confirm it, just hinted.’

  He paused and looked out of the window. He looked annoyed, tense. It had overtaken his tiredness.

  ‘There was still a deference, some level of innocence maybe, on our part. And maybe theirs also. They just wanted to cover the whole thing up, if they could. There was little will to cooperate. They must have known, suspected he was. . .’ he said, energy suddenly draining from him again. ‘A strange one, a danger to the pupils in their care, and they should have acted sooner.’

  Mr Lavelle, blond and charismatic. More fancied than the gardener.

  The cafe was starting to empty and the staff were cleaning up loudly behind the counter. There was a large blackboard near the cash desk with a quote from Andy Warhol on it – ‘Life is Pretty’. The staff eyed us impatiently. We were keeping them from their other lives.

  ‘If they were willing to believe he ran away with her, they must have thought there was something going on between them,’ he said. ‘They failed in their duty of care, either way.’

  ‘Was the fact that she was the scholarship girl a factor in all of this?’ I asked.

  He clenched his hands together and looked down at the table for a second. Like he might be praying for patience, guidance.

  ‘I fear so; if it had been one of the other girls they might have moved quicker,’ he said slowly, ‘but then I don’t know, I mean. . .’

  That sense of lost worlds again. When the rules were different.

  We didn’t speak for a few seconds. I watched the waitress clean down the counters near the cash desk and thought about how hard it is to keep going sometimes, to create a life, to have dignity, to be someone.

  ‘Who do you think he was, Lavelle?’ I asked, turning back to face him.

  ‘I think we would describe him now as a classic paedophile, attracted to vulnerable young women, targeting them. I think Louisa, she was an outsider in there, and he would have recognized that. When we looked into his background, his family, we discovered he was something of an outsider too. He was an only child, spoilt, kind of indulged by his mother who thought he was going to be the next Picasso or something,’ he said. ‘He was expelled from a number of schools before being privately tutored at home. He did get a place in art school but dropped out and travelled Europe for a year or so. Then he arrived in Temple House. There had been no convictions or indeed any violence or crime in his background but I don’t think that anyone was terribly surprised he had ended up doing something, if not criminal, at least scandalous.’

  ‘Wasn’t he an unusual choice of teacher for the school?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know really – maybe, yes. He must have been. But then he seemed to have been a bit of a fantasist, with extravagant tastes and a sense of himself as superior, special. He enjoyed the attention I’d say he got from the students, the access he had to them. He had. . .’ He paused.

  ‘Charm,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes, that was probably it,’ he said.

  ‘And where did he go, do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘If I knew that. . .’ He smiled at me. ‘He probably had it all planned. For him there would have been no rush, he had maybe six or seven hours to get on the road, jump on a boat, and disappear. It’s possible to do.’

  ‘You think he murdered her?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke the word softly but firmly.

  ‘How did you find her parents?’ I asked.

  ‘They were cowed, I think, by the school. The talk in the first few days was that she had run away, not been abducted. Of course we recognized something suspicious had happened, but somehow they’d had this bad start to the investigation and were never quite able to get back to the point of being parents of a victim, rather than some loose, wild teenager, who should have known better.

  ‘It was sad, her father used to ring me every few months or so, for many years after. He would always be sort of apologetic, as if he was bothering us, then finally the calls stopped,’ he said.

  ‘He died,’ I said.

  I could see him, leaning against the low wall outside their house. His coat too large, and a bottle just visible in a side pocket.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said.

  ‘Did you ever believe she might have run away, willingly, with Lavelle?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I never felt she was this troubled person they all claimed. It all felt concocted, a better story for them. She wasn’t very popular and may have had a hard time but that is not the same thing as wanting to disappear,’ he said.

  The waitress began to clear the table around us. He held on to his cup and nodded to her.

  ‘Can you tell me more about the search itself?’ I asked.

  ‘We concentrated mainly on the village and the surrounding fields. We searched the school grounds also, but there was nothing. Her room was untouched, nothing taken. She hadn’t run away,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘His cottage had been emptied, though, and the summer house.’

  ‘The summer house?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, at the school, where he held his art classes.’

  I wrote ‘summer house’ down in my notebook. We said nothing for a minute.

  ‘Why are you writing about it, can I ask?’ he said.

  ‘It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary later this year, we are trying to jog some memory. It’s going to be a series, if I can get enough together. But besides that it’s a story that’s kind of haunted me anyway,’ I answered.

  I had never really said that out loud. I wondered why.

  He looked at me sadly.

  ‘I can understand that,’ he said. ‘It’s stayed with me, a case like this, it does. I was broken that we didn’t get further than we did on it. You lose sleep. . .’ His voice faded off slightly. ‘You know, I used to think about those fields around the village, even after we had scaled back the search. It was there, she died there, near that village. I was sure of it. I’d dream of it sometimes, even years after.’

  ‘It’s like a fairy tale,’ I said.

  ‘More a nightmare; the school was a strange place. Cold, unyielding and not the kind of institution where I’d send my daughter. Harsh.’

  ‘Black masses,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s one of the theories, that it was this place of pagan ritual and sacrifice historically, like a hell-fire club before the nuns took over,’ I said.

  He laughed and said he doubted that.

  I smiled.

  He drank the last of his tea.

  ‘I lived in the house opposite Louisa’s.’ I stared out the window. A homeless man with a small dog was laying out some cardboard on the ground.

  ‘Yes, you said in your note,’ he responded.

  I noticed he had gently reached into his pocket for his keys. I hoped he didn’t think I was a nut, like my new internet friends and their talk of pagan rituals and the killing of virgins.

  ‘Well, at least I have the keyboard warriors, they have much to say on the case,’ I joked.

  ‘Ah yes, we didn’t have them to contend with then. Though, you know, sometimes there is truth, buried in the madness,’ he said.

  He was looking at me intently now and I felt it was something he was probably good at, watching people, seeing t
hings in them others didn’t. Then making a measured and careful judgement.

  For a second the image of the Slender-Man at the edge of the forest came into my head.

  Who led Louisa away?

  ‘I want to write something different, something more meaningful about it,’ I said.

  And I meant it.

  He watched me for another second, then started to pull on his jacket.

  ‘I think you shouldn’t expect too much of them, any of them. They thought they were above the law, did not see themselves as tabloid fodder. It was about saving face,’ he said.

  I packed up my notebook and phone as he spoke.

  ‘Keep in touch; if there is anything more I can help you with, I would be happy to meet up again. And if you do come across some new information let me know and I can link you with someone inside to talk to. You never know. The case remains open, though not active, to be honest,’ he said.

  ‘I’m going to see her, Victoria,’ I said, almost as an afterthought, ‘tonight.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, gesturing to the offices across from the cafe.

  ‘She is giving a lecture,’ I said. ‘I have a good feeling she will talk to me. I have been writing to her a lot, explaining why I am doing this.’

  He paused a moment and frowned, like he was worried for me, then nodded politely and walked out.

  I left the cafe and looked across the square to the building where Victoria worked. The last of the evening sunshine was reflected on its windows. Even though it was chilly and would be dark within an hour, it felt like spring was waiting quietly in the wings. There was a slight change in the light and an urgency in the air. People rushed past to catch buses and trains home to the suburbs or greeted friends outside smart bars, ready for a night of ease and glamour after their day at a desk.

  I had taken to writing in the cafes near Victoria’s office. In my head she would walk in one day and queue for a sandwich or something. But I had yet to catch sight of her. And she had still not responded to my emails.

  Maybe my mother was right. I took things too far. Always had something to prove.

  Dear Victoria,

  February 2015

  I am sorry you did not respond to my earlier email. I do believe there is an angle and insight to this story that you, and only you, can provide. Your memories could really help people understand who Louisa was. Her short life has been marred by rumour and innuendo. This is a chance to set the record straight. . .

  Dear Victoria,

  February 2015

  I am again sorry to not have heard from you. I understand this is difficult. And if my last email in any way suggested otherwise, or reopened the emotional impact and loss you must feel, I apologize. I recently met with Helen O’Neill. She was adamant that you would not open up to me about Louisa, but I feel she is wrong. . .

  Dear Victoria,

  February 2015

  It’s been over a week since my last email. I am again very disappointed not to have heard from you. I do sincerely understand how difficult this is. I did want to let you know, however, that I will be speaking to some college friends of Mr Lavelle. They are very keen to talk about him, even after all this time. They feel that only now, so many years later, will they be able to open up about who he was and also discard some of the things that were written about him. They feel he was not a violent man. . .

  I thought much about what I would say if she did respond.

  I walked across the square and entered her office building. There was a security guard and a welcome desk in the glassfronted lobby. The fading sunlight was coming through the clear roof high above my head and I could see small bits of dust floating in the air. I imagined them landing on the polished marble floor and forming a layer of dirt.

  A large TV screen displayed revolving images of planes, high-rise offices and young smart people shaking hands. There was a photographer in the corner of the foyer lining people up for photographs against a large backdrop that had the name of the company in giant letters. A lady with a foreign accent in a black suit gave me a name badge and directed me to the room where the talk would take place. She said the event would be followed by drinks and food in the rooftop garden and she gave me a ticket for a free glass of something. I would need this, she warned me with an air of precision and efficiency.

  The room was filling up when I entered; young, enthusiastic graduates chatted around me and drank white wine. I squeezed through the crowd and went to the refreshment stand where glasses of champagne were lined up, an army of them, with strawberries floating on top. I took a bottle of water and stood at the side of the room. There were no windows. The walls were pale grey and covered in a kind of thick, hairy fabric. There was a table at the front and it was laid out for three, with notepads and pens.

  My bag was heavy. The leather strap cutting into my arm. The pain was dull and matched the one I could feel starting to grow behind my eyes. The chatter grew louder and the room felt airless. The light from the long tubes of fluorescence above was harsh on the exposed skin underneath. Everyone looked vaguely green or yellow. A long winter lay on us. I closed my eyes for a second and leaned my head against the wall.

  A shadow passed over the red blurry haze behind my closed eyes and stopped. It didn’t pass me by.

  And somehow I knew, without opening my eyes, that it would be Victoria.

  Louisa

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rumour. It speaks first in dull whispers.

  And what does it speak of?

  A plain and banal truth, with a covering of lies.

  Like someone painting leaves on to a dead tree. A sparse, harsh, winter thing, cloaked in the pretence of abundance. Seductive and convincing but only at twilight.

  I understand now, all these years later, you do inevitably become something of what others say of you. Rumour sharpens the mood, it is an expectation the audience has been primed for. And it shapes the outline, the scope of your performance. Your life. It is judgement, without any need for the gods.

  That’s what happened to him, and to me also.

  The evenings drew in and became cooler but mostly we chose not to notice. Victoria and I played tennis in the late October afternoons after class, and sometimes for a few minutes before the bell rang, we would just collapse on the damp grass with our school jumpers for pillows. We would stare at the clouds going past and the leaves on the trees golden against the sky. There was always a cool, fresh breeze and the faint taste of salt in the air. I have that sense of Technicolor again when I think of it, those moments of heightened consciousness when you know that this, this moment right now, will be important to remember. Because it won’t last.

  The birds would soar high above our heads and we took to predicting the weather. If the seagulls came in droves off the cliffs it meant rain was on the way. And we were almost always right. The mist, though, was harder to foresee. A few wisps at first that you failed to register as anything much except the slight dying of the light. It was only as you stood up, brushing the grass from your jumper, that you would notice the creeping damp on your legs and in the air, wet socks and shoes. And the school would no longer be tall and all-seeing but blurred and ghostly, its edges rubbed out.

  Some nights, when the fog was really thick, the fog-horn could be heard far off down the coast. A mournful cry, a warning let out into the waves and the night. I found it strangely comforting, like someone else was awake in the dark. Watchful and concerned. I slept very little. The room was cold and shadowy and when it was windy, the heavy, dusty curtains would blow slightly. The windows were old, with cracks in the glass and the wood splintered, with moss growing around the edges of the frame. In the mornings the entire pane would have condensation on it and each day I wiped it away with the sleeve of my uniform. It became a morning ritual.

  Victoria believed in ghosts, and in communion with the dead. She told me once that after her favourite aunt had died she woke up one night and could smell her p
erfume in her bedroom. It was a particularly romantic and flowery smell, orange blossoms and hyacinth, and not something Victoria would ever wear. She dared not move in the bed. It happened three times and then nothing. She wondered had her aunt got bored and just left. She was sure the school was haunted. She thought it was by the dead, but I was more certain it was by the living. With their petty hatreds and awkward, mean desires. They were the shadow that lay on everything.

  As we sat in the grass those afternoons, I remember telling Victoria about the strangely religious phase in my life as a child where I’d take the Illustrated Children’s Bible out of the library on a regular basis. Jesus was blond and blue-eyed in it and always wearing white, glistening robes. He was taller than everyone too, like a giant Aryan beauty. I read it every night before bed, tracing the Hebrew names with my finger as if they contained magic within them. Exotic and elusive in equal measure. I had never told anyone about this. No one before would have been interested.

  I also spoke of the small statue of Mary I had that glowed a light green colour in the dark. I made an altar for her in my room and picked daisies from the garden and put them in a glass as we didn’t have any vases. She seemed benign by day and I felt that I had appeased her well enough with my morning prayers and wilting weeds. But by night she turned on me. Her glow was ethereal and terrifying. I was sure I had been singled out for a special fate. She would come calling, insisting I had a vocation, asking me to remove my eyeballs, or walk on hot coals in bare feet, just to prove my love. I had a strong sense that there was something I was going to be forced to do, and I would have no choice in the matter. I was the one.

  ‘Maybe that’s what brought you here,’ Victoria said. ‘You possibly do have a calling.’