The Empty Frame (5 page)

“Exactly what I say. The picture frame was empty. The canvas was blank, as if someone had rubbed her out.”

“So she was… walking around the place? Is that what you're saying?” Sam was starting to sound hostile again.

“I don't know. I'm just telling you what I saw. I wasn't asleep, I was down there and that's what had happened. I'd swear on a Bible, if you wanted me to.”

There was a long silence. This was utterly serious. Magnus often talked of an “Uncle Robert” who'd been a priest and had been kind to him. It was because of this old man that he sometimes talked of “swearing on the Bible”. It wasn't a thing he ever said lightly. Floss, now seeing in her own mind's eye the enormous gilded frame empty of the haughty young woman who had stood there, so imperious and proud, felt suddenly frightened herself. They had all agreed that the Lady Alice Neale looked cold, almost cruel. And yet her ghost had wept as it wandered about.

“You said
women
,” Sam reminded him, but rather more quietly than before, as if he too felt a bit frightened – or at least, less certain. “So are there more of these wandering ghosts?”

“I don't know,” Magnus answered. “But there was definitely somebody in the Council Chamber just now. You two had gone downstairs and I stayed with the Colonel while he locked up because, well, you never know, and I
saw
something. I thought at first that it was the Lady Alice, she had the same kind of Elizabethan ruff
and she was tall and thin. But then I realised it couldn't be, because she was dressed in white, with a black scarf thing. It was the other way round from the painting.”

“As if the colours had been reversed? As if you were seeing… a kind of negative?” Sam was getting interested, in spite of himself.

“Yes. I hadn't thought of that,” Magnus said humbly, “that's exactly right.”

“And what did she do? Did she speak to you? Did she look at you at all?”

“No. Ghosts don't.”

“You've met one before then?”

“
Listen
, are you taking this seriously or not?” Magnus said to Sam, getting his courage back.

“Perhaps the people I should be talking to are the Colonel and Cousin M,” and he fell silent.

“Sorry… 
sorree.
”

“Get to the end of the story, Mags,” said Floss. “Come on.”

“Well, that is the end. It looked as though she was frozen, in a picture, and sort of being rolled across the room, except that she'd got these little white gloves and she kept twisting them into a ball. Oh and I couldn't see her feet at all, or the bottom part of her dress, and that's because I was seeing her nearly four hundred years ago, when the floor of the room was much lower. Do you remember? Colonel Stickley said it had been raised.”

“Wow!” said Sam, “That's right. He did.” The scientific nature of this explanation appealed to him, but first you had to believe that there
were
ghosts.

“Well, what are we going to do about what you've seen, Mags?” Floss asked him. She didn't quite know what she thought. He had sounded utterly convincing but he obviously had a powerful imagination and it was just possible he'd dreamed the whole thing about coming downstairs last night. Dreams were sometimes so vivid it was hard to believe you were not awake, when you were in the middle of them. It was harder to explain what he had seen in the Council Chamber and the details were so precise. She found them convincing.

“I'm going to write down absolutely everything that's happened so far,” he said, “in a notebook. I brought one. And then… well, I'd like to talk to Colonel Stickley.”

“D'you want us all to talk to him?”

“I don't know, yet. Let me think about it.”

“Sooner you than me,” Sam grunted, rolling his modesty screen into position so he could put on his swimming trunks.

But Floss whispered, “We're on your side, Mags.”

“
Are
you?” he said. “But Sam doesn't seem to believe me. What does ‘being on my side' mean?”

“It means,” Floss answered slowly, “that I – that we –
er, love you, and believe in you, even if we're not sure yet about the ghosts.”

Magnus turned pink. But she suspected he was pleased.

Sam emerged wearing a pair of old shorts with his swimming trunks underneath. “Let's go and find Maude,” he said, “and ask her about the pool. It's so stuffy up here. I want a swim.”

The round turret room was retaining the heat quite amazingly. Magnus ran his eyes up and down the freshly-painted walls. “There are some terrible cracks here,” he said. “Have you noticed them? There are some on the landings as well. I expect they run down through all the rooms. Do you think Colonel Stickley knows about them?”

Sam shrugged. “Dunno. Are they important? The place isn't going to fall down, is it, after eight hundred years?”

“Is it really that old?” said Floss.

“Parts of it are… what on earth are you doing, Mags?”

Magnus had produced a large strip of sticking plaster and was laying it carefully across one of the biggest cracks, just inside the fireplace. “You have to allow a bit of give,” he said. “It's called a tell-tale.”

“A what?”

“It tells you if the walls are moving apart. Builders do it a lot. We must check this for movement every day. If the plaster gets tighter then the crack is widening.”

“I see. And what are we going to do if the walls fall down?” Sam said sarcastically.

“They won't. It takes years, usually. I think it's all the hot summers we've had. The ground that this tower is built on must have dried out, and shrunk.”

“I'm off,” said Sam impatiently. It was so hot. “You two can do what you like. And if I see Colonel Stickley I'm going to tell him that we're occupying a hard hat area. I'll leave the ghost bits to you, Mags.”

“Listen, don't be mean to him,” Floss whispered, catching him up as he made his way down the spiral staircase.

“Well I can't cope. I'd no idea he could be so, so
weird.
First it's ghosts that step out of picture frames, then it's cracks in the walls and bits of plaster. Nothing feels very normal round here.”

“That's because it's not,” Magnus informed him in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice. He had obviously heard every word.

In the walled garden Maude was having trouble with her sprinkler, and also with Arthur. She was trying to sow some seeds from a packet, but as soon as she had patted the earth back over her carefully-made drills, the cat dug them up again. Then he lay down in them, purring, and began to chew the empty seed packets which, impaled on twigs, marked where everything had been planted. “This is
hopeless
,” she said in exasperation, chasing him off. “He thinks he's a dog. I've never known a cat chew things. He's in absolute disgrace with Colonel Stickley; he keeps chewing up
The Times.
” She looked at the sprinkler which was dribbling feebly out of only half its holes. “And look at that. Do you think he's chewed that up too?”

Sam inspected the sprinkler and noticed that the hosepipe attached to it was kinked up in several places. As soon as he straightened it out the water wooshed out with terrific force, soaking them all. Nobody minded getting wet, it was so warm, but Arthur fled to a safe viewing point on top of a rose arch.

Sam was thinking how peculiar it was that Cousin
M, who was a professional gardener and who'd written books on the subject, hadn't noticed all those knots in the hosepipe. Gardeners were usually such practical people.

But then she said, “It's really most odd, getting all those kinks in the pipe. No wonder the sprinkler was bunged up. Thank you, dear. That was such a help.” In spite of himself, and although he was determined not to get obsessed like Magnus, or to start seeing things where there was probably nothing to see, Sam couldn't help thinking of Cousin M's flower arrangement in the turret room fireplace, and of how the white petals had been torn to pieces. If there really were some ghostly women around then they had a grudge against people.

“It seems ridiculous to have sprinklers on all the time,” Cousin Maude went on. “They banned sprinklers and hosepipes last year, and they'll be banning them again if we don't get some rain soon. Life would be a lot easier for me if we concreted this whole place over. Perish the thought.”

“But it's
gorgeous
, Cousin M,” said Floss, looking round at the ancient kitchen garden with its rusty brick walls smothered in every conceivable thing that grew. There were not only roses and honeysuckles, but vines and serious-looking fruit trees, their branches trained into intricate patterns along wires fixed into the masonry. There were orderly rows of vegetables and
there were flowerbeds, there was a sundial and a pond with a fountain and, right in the middle, there was a maze with fat little box hedges. It was so small you got to the middle in no time and, as all the children were taller than the hedges, there was no danger of getting lost. They were soon right in the centre of it, where they found an ancient statue of a little child. It was made of some greenish metal, its ridged curls covered with bird-droppings, a child with gently-folded hands that stared rather sadly into another small pool, covered with waterlily leaves.

Cousin M was obviously pleased that Floss approved of her garden, but she didn't seem to want anybody lingering by the statue. “Colonel Stickley doesn't really like people coming here,” she said apologetically, leading them out of the maze. “It's rather a special place to him, I mean where the statue is. He likes to sit there and smoke his pipe.”

“Why is it special?” asked Magnus.

Cousin M paused. “Well, he did have a wife,” she said, “but she died a long time ago. There is a son, David – oh, he'll be at least forty by now, though I still think of him as a young boy. I can see him now, playing in this garden.”

Magnus said sharply, “Where is he? You said
is
not
was.
” Sam and Floss exchanged looks. He was in his detective mood again, firing questions at everybody.

But the odd, abrupt manner which so irritated them didn't seem to offend Cousin M. She said, “Yes, dear, I did. He's a very clever man, he speaks a lot of languages. He worked abroad for a newspaper and he was captured some years ago by a group of terrorists – two of them were captured. They'd insisted on entering a no-go area, to try and get some photographs. It's the usual story I'm afraid. They just disappeared. He
is
alive – well, he was three years ago. But his father hasn't heard anything about him since then, when the man they captured at the same time was released. It's really terrible for my cousin, not knowing what has become of his only child.”

The three of them looked very grave and no-one knew what to say. Then Floss spoke. “He must think it's part of the curse,” she said, “and why nothing's gone right here for years and years. Does it really go back to that horrible-looking monk, that – what was he called?”

“Burst Belly,” Magnus informed her.

“I don't think so, dear,” Cousin M said calmly. “Families do have runs of bad luck and some have very tragic histories, but as for curses, well, I don't believe in that sort of thing at all.” She bent down and began to attack a clump of weeds that were growing up vigorously in the middle of a seed drill. “Now, you could say
this
was a curse, just look at those roots!”

“You're like me,” Sam told her, squatting down in the flowerbed and helping her pull them out.

“Am I really, dear? That's very encouraging. How, exactly?”

“Well, you're practical and you don't seem to believe old wives' tales.”

Cousin M grinned. “Even though I'm a bit of an old wife myself?”

“I didn't mean that,” Sam began, feeling confused. “I just meant that I get the feeling you wouldn't take Magnus's theories about the Abbey very seriously.”

Cousin Maude straightened up. “Ouch! That's my back. I really
must
remember to get up more slowly, doctor's orders.” She shook the earth off her trowel then looked at Magnus. “What are these ‘theories' of yours about the Abbey, dear? I don't think I've heard about them.”

Magnus opened his mouth but Sam got in first. Magnus's rather slow and pedantic manner of speaking, when he was really gripped by something, got on his nerves. “He thinks the Abbey might be haunted and that that's why people don't book conferences here any more, or use the sports centre. Have
you
seen anything, Cousin M?”

She looked him straight in the eyes. Then she looked equally keenly at Magnus and Floss. Silence had fallen on the old garden. They were all waiting for her to speak.

“No, dears, I haven't, not ever. I've not lived in the Abbey all that long, I only came back here two years ago. Cecil didn't want to lose the place and he needed a business partner. I had some money to invest and I wanted to get my hands on another garden. So, well, here I am. I don't really understand why people have stopped coming here. It's a perfect sort of place, I think.”

“Who
does
know about the Abbey, then?” demanded Magnus. “Colonel Stickley doesn't seem to want to talk about it, or to show us things. But I suspect he
does
think there are ghosts around, he's like me.”

“Really? What do you mean by that, dear?”

“Well, in some people,” Magnus began in the high-pitched, detective voice that was becoming familiar to them, “the veil between this world and the spirit world is very, very thin. Those are the people who see things.”

“Or think they do,” Sam muttered.

“I see. That's very well put. I think I'm not one of those people, Magnus. My feet are very firmly planted on the earth, you could say. I'm not a person who ‘sees things', or picks up special atmospheres.”

“I just wish somebody would take me seriously,” Magnus said. His voice had become rather petulant and complaining but, even as the words came out, he felt ashamed of himself. The Colonel's only son, David,
who would have inherited the Abbey, was missing, presumed dead. That in itself was a truly terrible thing. No wonder he wandered about at night and brooded by the fire. The missing son felt like a curse in itself; you didn't need ghosts as well.

“Does Wilf know anything?” asked Floss. The small lean-looking man frying bacon in his khaki shorts had seemed quite friendly.

“I don't know what Wilf knows,” Maude told her. “But he's a real no-nonsense type. I wouldn't think he'd have much time for spooks. He was in the war, with the Colonel. He was his batman.”

Sam, visualising Batman and Robin flying off on some dangerous mission, smiled to himself, not able to square this picture with Wilf and the Colonel.

Cousin Maude saw the smile. “Oh, it just means he was his
aide
,” she explained. “He did the practical things, when they were on military manoeuvres. Wilf's my cousin's best friend – but I'm not sure how much he knows about the Abbey.”

She stared across the vegetable plot, spotted more unofficial greenery, frowned and prepared to do battle. “Japanese Knot Weed… whatever next? It's
lethal
!” Then, as she picked up her trowel again, her face suddenly cleared. “There
is
somebody who knows a lot about the Abbey,” she said, “but I'm not sure. I imagine you wouldn't really want to go visiting the sick.”

“Who is it?” asked Floss.

“Everybody calls her Miss Adeline,” explained Cousin M. “She's over ninety, but she's certainly in her right mind. She's got a wonderful memory and she's as sharp as a needle. She's very frail though, and she's going blind. She loves having visitors and she's quite a talker, if she's got someone who'll listen. I call in most days, but of course it's only boring old me. She'd love it if someone young were to drop by, I know she would. She was born in the Abbey and she's never lived anywhere else.”

“Where's her house?” asked Magnus. This ancient lady sounded the most promising thing so far. He felt very warm towards Cousin M. She may not believe in ghosts but she'd just given him the opportunity to do some serious research.

“It's the Lodge by the front gates. You passed it last night, in the dark. If you'd like to go I'll make her up a few goodies. She has those rather boring meals in tins delivered most days. I think a bit of home cooking wouldn't go amiss. Would you like to go after lunch? I've got quite a bit more to do here.”

“‘Luncheon is at twelve-thirty',” quoted Magnus, in a flat voice. “‘It will be a light repast'.” Maude stared at him quizzically. Did he have a very subtle sense of humour or was he poking sly fun at Colonel Stickley?

“Wilf said it was only going to be cheese and pickle
sandwiches,” Sam explained solidly. Then he added, “I'm going to see if I can get into the swimming pool first. I'm melting.”

They found the pool quite near the front gates, near Miss Adeline's house, which turned out to be a beautiful old cottage with brick and flint walls, a sagging roof of crumbling red tiles and a messy, tangled garden. Cousin Maude no doubt would have whipped out her secateurs and set it to rights in no time but Sam, who had some experience of old ladies, worked out that this Miss Adeline would have her own views. Not that he intended to come visiting. He had other plans.

The old cottage presented a sharp contrast to the swimming pool building which resembled a mini aircraft hangar and was built of ugly yellow brick. “It's a good thing most of it's hidden under the trees,” said Floss. “How could Colonel Stickley have put up such a monstrosity? It's hideous.”

“I expect he was saving money,” Sam said.

The main door of the building was open and admitted them into a cool tiled entrance hall filled with bedraggled-looking pot plants. The windows were smeary, there was a stale, musty smell and a definite feeling that nobody used the place much. But it
was
a swimming pool, and it was a large one, a serious rectangular pool, not silly, in the shape of a piano or a
whale, and through glazed inner doors they could see gently-moving waters of a bright Mediterranean blue. There was nobody swimming, it was all theirs. Sam's heart rose. He adored being the first in. “Let's go,” he said.

But when he pressed the handle down he found that the inner door was firmly locked. He rattled it in frustration yelling, “Damn! This was the only thing I wanted, and now it's locked!”

Floss tried the door too, and banged on the glass. She quite wanted a swim herself. She'd improved recently and she reckoned her front crawl might be faster than Sam's.

“No good trying to break the door down,” Magnus told them sententiously. Secretly, he was much relieved. He'd been dreading this moment, being exposed as a poor swimmer in front of the others. He'd been planning to slip down to the pool on his own some time, and practise in secret. “Wilf probably knows about the pool,” he said. “Why don't you ask him when it's open?”

“I'm going to. I'm going to do it right now,” Sam answered, giving the locked door a final kick before turning away.

“Wait for me,” Floss said. “Come on, Mags.”

Magnus watched them running off down the drive. Then something made him turn and look back, some
physical thing, some force that seemed to be drawing him like a magnet towards the bright blue water which shimmered at him through the locked glazed doors. And she was there again, the woman in the white dress, moving over the surface of the bright blue panelled water, in a kind of soft-edged haze.

This time Magnus found that he wanted to hold his ground. He felt no fear. If asked why, he would have answered that there was nothing to be afraid of, because he could clearly see the woman's face. This was because the apparition was scarcely moving, rather hovering over the pool, anxiously twisting the little white gloves in her thin fingers, reducing them to a crumpled ball. And the face was not a face to instil terror.

It was certainly the face of the portrait in the Great Hall and, like the painting, it was proud and haughty. But round the mouth there was something else, less of certainty, more of regret. Some grievous memory was softening what he'd thought was a harsh face. The apparition's eyes, as in the painting, were blue, a colour he'd always thought of as hard and cold. But now, momentarily, the woman stopped moving, turned her head and looked at him and he saw two tears roll slowly down her cheeks.