The Silence (16 page)

‘You’re such a romantic.’

‘One of us has to be. Is that Esmond’s music? I’ll put it in my briefcase so you don’t lose it, shall I?’ As she picked up the music score, the title page fluttered open slightly, and Nell gave a small gasp.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Well, nothing much, except . . . There’s another name written inside the music. There, on the first of the inner pages.’

‘Isobel Acton,’ said Michael, leaning over her shoulder to read it. ‘Do we know who Isobel Acton was?’

‘A lady who poisoned her husband and watched him die while she played Chopin,’ said Nell, rather brusquely. ‘I found an account of it at the house. It’s a bit macabre. She was tried here in The Pheasant, actually, in fact that’s probably the murder trial referred to in that text.’

‘I wonder if this is the music she played while she watched him die,’ said Michael, picking up the Chopin score to examine it in more detail.

‘You’re making romantic connections again.’ Nell put the music into her briefcase, and closed it with a determined snap. ‘Not to mention stretching the coincidences.’

‘Well, whatever it is, it looks as if Esmond appropriated the music,’ said Michael. ‘And he put his name on it. Or somebody did. Did Brad ever play Chopin?’

‘I can’t remember,’ said Nell. ‘Don’t forget your notebook.’

During the short drive, Michael was annoyed to realize he was feeling apprehensive about going inside Stilter House again. But Nell did not appear particularly worried or, if she was, she was not showing it. She said she would let Michael see the material she had found about Isobel Acton, ‘Mostly written by its builder,’ she said. ‘It sounded as if he’d had a bit of a strict upbringing, and I think Isobel was the local vamp and she intrigued him. He thought her house – the original house on the site – was beautiful and hoped he could emulate it.’

‘I wouldn’t call Stilter beautiful, precisely,’ said Michael, as they went down Gorsty Lane, and the house came into frowning view. ‘At least, not from what I saw of it last night, although I’d have to admit it wouldn’t look its best in that rain. But I should think it’s a good example of Edwardian design. What happened to Isobel’s house?’

‘No idea. It looked as if there were remnants of it in the grounds, though,’ said Nell, and Michael was just wondering whether to tell her what had happened in the outbuildings which presumably were the remnants, when they reached the house and the moment passed.

And after all there was nothing so very sinister. This was merely an old house, with parts of its facade slightly crumbling and one chimney a bit lopsided. Even the gardens no longer looked as if ghosts might prowl their grey-green depths: they were simply a tanglewood mass of rose bay willow and thrusting weeds, and if anything lurked there it would be rabbits and grass snakes rather than wraiths abandoning their ivy-mantled tower for a night’s revelry among the humans.

The ivy-mantled tower was still there, of course, but in the morning sunlight it was only a ramshackle straggle of dilapidated outbuildings, each one looking as if it was propping its neighbour up. Still, he could make out the gaping hole where he had smashed the door from its hinges to get out, which proved he had not imagined the entire episode. He would mention the unhinged door to Nell at some suitable moment, in case they needed to arrange a repair.

Nell stood for a moment in the hall, and Michael waited, unable to gauge her feelings. But she only said, ‘I’ll head upstairs to see how accessible the attics are. I didn’t really explore them yesterday and I’d better check them properly.’

‘I’ll have a look round while you do that,’ said Michael. ‘Everywhere’s perfectly ordinary by daylight, isn’t it? How remarkable.’

Nell went up the stairs, armed with a torch, and Michael went towards the music room. A film of dust covered the piano and there were one or two framed photographs on the high, narrow mantelpiece – posed, black-and-white shots, the hairstyles and clothes mostly from the 1930s and 1940s.

He was just wondering whether to replace Esmond’s music on the stand or to leave it on the shelf by the fireplace, when he saw that the tapestry seat of the piano stool was hinged. To store music? If so, the Chopin score, brittle and fragile as it was, would be better in there. He put it on the piano’s surface, and lifted the lid of the stool. It had the stiffness of long disuse, but it came up fairly easily, displacing quantities of dust, but revealing a thick stack of more music scores. They looked quite old, and Michael, momentarily interested, lifted out the top pieces.

They all seemed to be piano scores, dog-eared and brittle, and he was about to replace them when he realized that interleaved with them was a letter in a familiar hand. Emily, he thought, with a kind of affectionate exasperation, and took the letter over to the window seat to read.

It was dated five years earlier, and Michael thought the address was the Aberdeen one that had been on the letter sent to Nell’s shop.

Dear Charlotte,

Here, as promised, is the musical score, which you always call Esmond’s music. It was good of you to let me borrow it – I know you treasure everything linked to him. I’m sending it back by registered post as you’ll see, because it’s quite fragile and whatever we all believe or don’t believe about Esmond, the music is still a little piece of family history.

I’ve had it examined by a very helpful young man who knows about these things – he has a most charming shop in the village and is thought quite an expert, in fact he sold me some delightful glassware at Christmas, and he was as upset as I was when it turned out not to be actual Limoges. But it looks very nice in the glass cabinet, and of course he was unable to refund the money on account of my having bought it in the previous financial year, or something like that.

He says the score isn’t worth so very much, although if the signature of Isobel Acton is genuine – and can be proved – there might be some curiosity value to be got from that, what with the murder trial. If she had been convicted and hanged, the signature might be worth considerably more, he says, what with people today being just as ghoulish as the crowds that stood outside Newgate to see a hanging, or the French harridans who took their knitting to guillotining sessions.

But – and here’s the real reason I’m writing – tucked inside the music, right at the back, were some papers written by Ralph West – Great-uncle Ralph that would be, I think, or perhaps one more great, or maybe even not an actual uncle, but still . . .

I don’t know if you ever saw these, but they make interesting reading, and all I can say is I hope none of our parents ever read them, because they raise a very worrying possibility. Still, they say there are one or two skeletons in all families’ closets.

I’ve made copies of Ralph’s papers in case the originals are lost or damaged, but do take care of them, won’t you? It’s dangerously easy to throw out old papers thinking they’re worthless, and before you know it a whole section of local history has vanished beyond recall. Imagine if the Paston family had never sent all those letters, we’d have lost such a valuable bit of the past. Our book club read the Paston Letters as a project last year. I found some of them a bit boring (I didn’t tell anyone in the book club that), but I did enjoy the way the Pastons used to sandwich enquiries as to each other’s health and grumbles about who was entitled to inherit lands, in between comments on the progress of the Wars of the Roses. And think of Pepys’ diaries telling about his work at the Admiralty and Charles II’s court, but also how he chased his wife round the bedroom, and how they buried the cheeses and saucepans in the garden during the Fire of London and he took Mr Holliards’ pills for his constipation. So I keep
all
old papers and letters, just in case.

Thank you for your enquiry about my indigestion. It’s a little better. I’m taking a preparation of peppermint and rhubarb. Charles Darwin apparently underwent hydrotherapy for the same thing, but I shouldn’t think one would be able to find a practitioner of hydrotherapy these days, should you? Apparently in New Zealand there’s something called Manuka Honey which is supposed to be very good for dyspepsia, but I haven’t been able to track any down, and New Zealand is such a very long way to travel for honey, although a beautiful country, I believe, and the people most interesting.

Look after yourself, my dear, and let me know when you feel able to travel up to bonnie Scotland to stay with me. I would make you very welcome.

Fondest love,

   Emily.

Oh, Emily, thought Michael, I simply must meet you one of these days.

He considered the letter’s main contents. If the unknown Ralph’s papers were not in the music stool, he would feel like tearing down the whole of Stilter House to find them. Failing that, he would wait for Emily to emerge from her health farm and try to get a sight of the photocopies. First, though, he went up to the bedroom floor and found a flight of narrow stairs which clearly led to the attics.

‘Nell? How are you getting on? Is there enough light?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think there’s much here.’

‘No undiscovered Turners?’

‘Not even a first-folio Shakespeare manuscript.’

‘Shall I come up to give you a hand?’

‘No, the roof pitch is so steep there isn’t much room for one, let alone two. I won’t be long, then you could help put the notes together. Oh, and I’ve got to throw my stuff and Beth’s into the cases. It won’t take long – we only brought the basics.’

‘All right. Shall I make some coffee and bring you some?’

‘The stove’s a bit Heath Robinson,’ said Nell. ‘It took me ages to fathom it. Wait till I come down.’

Michael assented, and went back to the music room to search for Ralph.

To begin with he thought he was not going to find anything. He went carefully through all the music in the tapestry stool, then without much optimism checked the shelves. The books were a dry, dusty collection, and the music mostly duplications of what was stored in the stool.

But he did find it. Sandwiched between a book of sermons written by a local vicar in 1935, and a dry-looking history of the Great War, was a sheaf of handwritten pages, all fairly good-quality notepaper which bore the printed heading,
Ralph West, Importers of Fine China and Porcelain,
and a Derby address. Most of the sheets were curling at the corners, but the writing was perfectly readable.

There was no heading, although 1900 was written in the top right-hand corner. But clearly these were the papers Emily had written about.

Michael took the pages to the window seat, sat down and began to read.