Property of a Lady (14 page)

Nell did not care, at that minute, whether Michael had imported an entire bed-full of females to Marston Lacy or whether he had been presiding over a modern-day harem in Charect House. She was still drained from so nearly losing Beth, and she was horrified at what Jack Harper had written.

She said, ‘That poor little girl. But that stuff about the dead man’s knock . . .’

‘Horror films? TV?’ He said it tentatively.

‘I don’t think it’s either of those,’ said Nell. ‘Beth mentioned it, almost in the same words as Ellie.’ She frowned, then said, ‘We can’t very well email to ask for information about Ellie, can we? Not now.’

‘No.’

Nell paused, then said, ‘But – there’s this, as well.’ She reached for Alice Wilson’s journal, which she had left on top of the bookshelf. She had taken a photocopy of the pages, and she had known, since they had sat down to eat at the Black Boar, that she was going to let Michael see the original.

‘What is it?’ He was already scanning the first few lines.

‘Diaries from a haunted house is probably the best description,’ said Nell. ‘It makes strange reading. It’s got the same reference in it – the dead man’s hand. Let me find it for you.’

She flipped through the pages, and Michael read the grisly chant aloud:

‘“Open lock to the dead man’s knock . . .

Fly bolt, and bar, and band . . .

Sleep all who sleep – wake all who wake.

But be as the dead for the dead man’s sake . . .’

He looked up from the journal. ‘That’s pretty chilling,’ he said. ‘What on earth is it?’

‘It’s from something called the
Ingoldsby Legends
. I’d never heard of it, but I looked it up after I read that journal – and after Beth talked about the rhyme. One of the legends used in it is called the Hand of Glory. It’s about a grisly old country belief that the hand of a murderer can cast an enchanted sleep and cause all doors to become unlocked – I can’t believe I’ve just said that.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve just said it, either. I’ve heard of the
Ingoldsby Legends
,’ said Michael thoughtfully, ‘but I’ve never read them. It’s a Victorian collection of myths and legends. Some of them quite comical – almost parodies. But it’s fiction, surely?’

‘Sort of fiction. It’s based on genuine old superstitions, seemingly. And this Hand of Glory thing is apparently a very old belief indeed.’

‘The power of the dead over the living,’ he said thoughtfully, and Nell was grateful for his instant comprehension. ‘Yes, that’ll go back thousands of years.’

‘Beth said she had a – an absolute compulsion to go after the music,’ said Nell. ‘She was quite upset about that – she knows she mustn’t talk to strangers or go off with them, but she said it was as if the music pulled her along.’

‘That’s quite creepy,’ said Michael. ‘It’s almost taking us into Pied Piper territory. But I can’t see, at the moment, how it fits in to all the other things.’

‘Nor can I. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea for Liz and Jack to bring Ellie to Marston Lacy.’

‘Because of Elvira,’ said Michael.

‘Yes. Only, I don’t know how you’d put them off without telling them the truth.’

‘And the truth is so off the wall, they’d probably think I was losing all grip on sanity,’ said Michael. ‘I suppose I could tell them to delay the trip because the house doesn’t look as if it’ll be ready by Christmas.’

‘Would that work?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ll do my best,’ said Michael, opening a new email message and starting to type. ‘I think that’s strong enough,’ he said after a couple of minutes. ‘I’ve implied it’s unlikely there’ll be any electricity or hot water.’

‘That would certainly put me off,’ said Nell. ‘If Liz happens to email me again – about the clock or anything else for the house – d’you want me to say anything to her? I don’t mean about what’s happening to Ellie or Beth, but just an offhand remark about the renovations seeming to take a long time.’

‘I think it’s probably better not.’

‘All right. Michael, is it possible that Ellie has read the
Ingoldsby Legends
?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘I’m as sure as I can be that Beth hasn’t.’ Nell drank the remains of her coffee, then said, ‘That grave where you found her. Whose grave was it?’

‘I didn’t notice. It was quite an old one, though.’

For a moment Nell wanted to believe it did not matter whose grave it had been. But those two other girls had been found in that churchyard, and supposing they had been on the same grave . . . ?

She looked at Michael, willing him to follow her thoughts. It seemed he did, because he said, ‘What time are you collecting Beth tomorrow?’

‘They said any time after ten. Ward rounds and discharge procedure have to be dealt with first, I think. So I was going to get there for about quarter past.’

‘It’s only three or four miles to St Paul’s Church. Shall I pick you up at half past eight tomorrow morning?’

‘I could do it on my own,’ began Nell.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you had someone with you?’

‘I suppose so. Yes, of course it would. Thank you.’

‘In the meantime,’ he said, picking up Alice Wilson’s journal and reaching for the laptop, ‘I’ll take the ghosts back to the Black Boar.’

ELEVEN

A
fter Michael had gone, Nell rinsed the coffee things, then fell into bed and went instantly into a deep, more or less dreamless, sleep. She woke at seven to the sound of birdsong, and remembered that Beth was all right and in just over three hours she would be home. She smiled, planning how she would make all Beth’s favourite things for lunch, then remembered about meeting Michael and leapt out of bed and headed for the shower.

Michael phoned shortly after eight, to say he would pick her up in twenty minutes if that was all right.

‘Fine. I’ll look out for you and come straight down.’

‘Did you sleep? And is Beth all right this morning?’

‘Bright as a button.’ Nell had phoned the hospital at twenty to eight and the staff nurse had said Beth was about to eat breakfast and was looking forward to coming home.

As they drove down the High Street, Michael said, ‘I read Alice Wilson’s journal. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Once I started I had to read all the way through to the end – it was nearly one a.m. before I finished it. It’s classic ghost stuff, of course – those three knocks on the door. In fact—’

‘What?’

‘Only that I thought I heard someone knocking the first time I was there,’ he said. ‘It was probably something outside, but it was very macabre.’

Nell said, ‘It was the part where she talked about hearing things not meant for human ears I found so chilling.’

‘The whispering of wolves and of demons,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Alice wrote very vividly, didn’t she?’

‘You think it might all be a form of fiction?’

‘I’d have to have known her before judging that,’ he said. ‘But if it was fiction, it was a peculiar way of writing it.’

‘And let’s remember she hid it in the clock,’ said Nell. ‘If you were writing fiction, surely you wouldn’t do that?’

‘It might have been part of the plan,’ he said.

‘But she put it there forty-odd years ago,’ pointed out Nell. ‘That’d be a very long-term plan. I do take your point, though. An intriguing old manuscript coming to light in an empty house . . . And clocks are often in ghost stories. They’re like cats and mirrors and mountains. They have a secret life of their own.’

‘Alice didn’t sound as if she’d be devious in that way, did she?’ said Michael. ‘If she wanted to write a ghost story, I have the feeling she’d have bombarded publishers.’

‘I rather liked the sound of her,’ said Nell. ‘I’d like to know what happened to her. It’s a pity Wilson is a fairly common surname – it might be difficult to trace. I wondered if it might be possible to find out more about the society she belonged to.’

‘Psychic investigation,’ said Michael, thoughtfully.

‘She called it the Society for Psychic Research,’ said Nell. ‘Which might have been its exact name or just her own shorthand. And there must have been dozens of psychic research set-ups around then – well, there’re probably dozens now.’

‘If the local council called her in, there might be correspondence with an address in their files,’ said Michael thoughtfully.

‘I wouldn’t bank on it. I found a few letters when I was trying to trace Charect House’s previous owners for Liz Harper,’ said Nell. ‘I was looking through land registration documents and transfer of titles, and there were three or four letters written to Alice by someone from the council – asking her to come to Marston Lacy to investigate the house. I think they’d got into the file by mistake. There was a note of exasperation in them, as if the council was only doing it as a last resort. I don’t think there was an address.’

‘I’ll bet the council destroyed anything official and missed those,’ said Michael. ‘Can you imagine any local authority admitting it employed a ghost-hunter?’

‘The society might not exist any longer,’ said Nell.

‘No. And even if we did find Alice, she’d be pretty elderly now. That journal was written in the nineteen sixties, and she mentioned a boyfriend who was killed at Hiroshima.’

‘Nineteen forty-five,’ said Nell, nodding. ‘That means she’d have to be at least forty when she was at Charect.’

‘Yes, and in that case— Hold on, I think this is the turning for St Paul’s Church. Or is it?’ He slowed down, peering doubtfully at the road.

Nell found this uncertainty rather endearing. She said, ‘I think it’s right – I can see the church spire from here.’

‘That’s how I found the place yesterday,’ he said, turning the car into the lane. ‘I just looked for a spire and drove towards it. If I got lost I was going to phone Inspector Brent and call out the cavalry.’

‘But you weren’t sure, not at that point, that Beth would be there.’

‘No, but I’d rather have looked stupid in front of the police than take the chance of missing her,’ he said, and Nell was so deeply grateful to him she could not speak for several minutes.

St Paul’s was, Nell supposed, a fairly typical country church: not very big, not particularly attractive or graceful, just a mass of grey stones that had been put here so the local people could worship. Once it would have been the centre of the small community, but now it did not look as if anyone had been here for years. The thought of Beth out here alone, in the dark coldness, twisted painfully around Nell’s heart again. We
will
leave here as soon as we can, she thought. Once I know Beth’s completely recovered, I’ll sell the shop and we’ll go. But then she remembered that other little girl, sobbing with terror at what might happen to Elvira, having to be forcibly sedated, and she realized that leaving Marston Lacy would feel like abandoning Ellie Harper.

Michael led the way through the old lychgate. As they went along the uneven path it began to rain – the same relentless rain as yesterday. Nell shivered and turned up her coat collar. Seeing this, Michael paused under an ancient cedar. ‘We should have brought an umbrella,’ he said. ‘I’ve got one in the car, I think. Stay here and I’ll dash back to get it.’

He was gone before Nell could say anything, and for a moment she watched him half-run between the trees, towards the road, then she turned back to look round the churchyard. The headstones jutted up out of the ground like black teeth, but the actual graves were covered with thick, soft grass; in spring and summer there might be the hazy colours of bluebells beneath the trees or primroses. And there was a serenity about the place which Nell had not expected. The thought of Beth being out here on her own would still give her nightmares, but it was not quite as macabre as she had feared. And you survived, Beth, thought Nell. I got you back.

Little clouds of mist rose from the grass, and the rain drained any colour the church might have possessed. Nell quite liked rain if she was indoors; she liked watching it beating against the windows. But this rain was thin and spiteful, and if you listened intently you could almost believe spiky little voices chattered inside it. The murmuring of demons, Alice had written. Nell shivered and peered through the dripping trees, hoping to see Michael returning, but it was difficult to see or hear anything in this rainstorm. No, it was all right, he was coming back now, she could hear footsteps.

And then, between one heartbeat and the next, she suddenly knew it was not Michael, and apprehension scudded across her skin like the prickle of electricity before a thunderstorm. Nell pressed back against the tree trunk, not wanting to be seen, knowing this to be ridiculous because even if it was not Michael it would be some perfectly innocent visitor to the church – a tourist or even one of Inspector Brent’s men: he had said something about the forensic team checking the place.

But apprehension was still clutching her because tourists did not usually walk through pouring rain at nine o’clock in the morning to view undistinguished, semi-derelict churches, and forensic experts would be noisy, lugging along cases and cameras. And neither tourists nor policemen would walk slowly and uncertainly, as if making a blind fumbling way towards the graves . . .