The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery (2 page)

After that, he disconnected it, disinterred the road maps from the glove compartment and then, with the idea of getting into the mood of the era he would be researching, switched on a Palestrina tape which the Director of Music had lent him. The voices of the
Nunc Dimittis
filled the car with eerie beauty, summoning up images of dim, quiet churches, grave-visaged statues, and massive and ancient books with ornate gilt clasps and illuminated pages.

There had not been much time before leaving to find out much about the Palestrina Choir, other than that it had been formed in an ancient monastery in Belgium in 1900 to commemorate the start of the new century, and was named for the sixteenth-century composer of sacred music. One of the reference books had said that the Choir was still remembered, in Liège, as tragic, and until quite recently older inhabitants could be found who would relate how the Choir had sung the accompaniment to its own death throes. This was intriguing, although it could mean any number of things. It could also be a figment of someone's gothic imagination.

Michael drove through the rather bleak landscape. There were deep, straight drainage canals, and occasionally massive sluice gates – grim reminders of the constant menace of flooding in these parts. At intervals were expanses of mud flats or salt marshes. Strong winds whipped across their surfaces, making thick, oozing ripples. Tiny villages were scattered around, providing a reminder that humans had settled here from a very early era – the Romans and the Iceni, wasn't it? Michael started to enjoy the feeling of entering an England whose roots went so far back. There was a bleak beauty to the landscape, and seeing a distant church spire against the thickening skies he remembered as well that this was a part of England that was soaked in sacred lore and memory; this was the ‘Holy Land of the English', with its proliferation of cathedrals and churches, and its tradition of monasteries and reclusive saints and hermits. Hermits and recluses. It brought his thoughts back to Luisa Gilmore who had apparently passed her entire life in this place.

He had hoped to check in at the pub, where he had a room booked for two nights, but an unplanned diversion a few miles outside a place with the delightful name of Poringland meant he had added forty-five minutes to his journey. This was nothing to do with the satnav's innards being crunched up, it was simply that Michael had missed a turning, which anyone could do. Clearly, it would be as well to drive directly to Fosse House, so that he could at least introduce himself to his hostess before going in search of the pub.

The roads were wide and there was hardly any other traffic, and he found Fosse House without much difficulty. The sun was setting with a Turneresque rowdiness of oriflammes across the horizon, but the storm was still grumbling menacingly over the North Sea and the wind was dashing itself against the car's sides. Michael began to wish he was back in Oxford.

But here, at last, was the gateway to the house – tall, once-white posts with a somewhat insecure wrought-iron gate. Beyond them was a fairly long drive, fringed with thick shrubbery and elderly trees. Driving cautiously and slowly, Michael could not see the house, but he could see lights shining beyond the trees – erratic glimmerings, like the mischievous beckoning of will o' the wisp marsh people … Or was it the corpse candles of a ghostly funeral, because if ever there was a gothic setting …?

He could not see the house, though. Was it shrouded in mystical mist, and only permitted to make itself visible once every hundred years? Did it rise up out of the Norfolk marshes on the occasion of some macabre anniversary, to lure unwary travellers?

It was neither of these things, of course. It was invisible from the first few yards of the drive simply because the trees obscured it. Michael rounded a slight curve in the drive and there it was, coming gradually into view through the trees as they dipped and moved in the storm-wind, as if tantalizingly and deliberately revealing a piece at a time. Fosse House, making a slow, dramatic entrance through the mists. The home of the enigmatic recluse Luisa Gilmore, whose ancestor had been part of a sacred choir that had sung to its own death throes.

It was not, of course, Roderick and Madeline Usher's mansion of gloom, but Michael thought it was not far off. It was four-square as to construction and greystone as to fabric, and there were sprawling patches of discoloration on the walls as if some inner disease had seeped through. The windows were tall and narrow, each one surmounted with curved thick stone lintels like frowning eyebrows. It was the most unwelcoming house Michael had ever seen, and he was guiltily relieved to think he would not be staying in this faded grandeur overnight. Dim lights showed at a couple of the windows, although they were so dim that it was remarkable they had been visible from the drive.

As he went towards the main front door something moved on the rim of his vision. He half-turned and caught sight of a figure walking around the side of the house. Probably someone had heard his arrival and was coming to meet him. Michael waited, but the setting sun was directly in his eyes, and he thought after all there was no one there. Or perhaps it had been a bird flying across the light. He was about to walk on towards the house when the movement came again, and this time there was no doubt. Someone was coming through the shrubbery, and whoever it was moved quickly and lightly. The figure of what looked like a young man wearing a long overcoat. As if suddenly becoming aware of Michael's presence, the boy stopped and looked directly at him. Michael received a brief impression of fair hair and pale features. At the same time a breath of wind stirred through the trees, and words reached him, fragmented as if broken up by the distance, but perfectly clear.

‘
Mustn't let them find me … You do understand that, don't you …? For my sanity's sake, I mustn't be caught …'

The words made little sense, and the figure was already backing away. But a ray of the setting sun touched the face, and Michael saw that, as he had thought, it was a young man, barely more than twenty or so. He had deep-set eyes and a small scar on one side of his face. Or was it a leaf that had blown there and clung to the boy's cheekbone?

The whisper came again. ‘
You do understand …? It's important that you do … I must get into the house, before they catch me …'

It seemed inconceivable that this totally strange young man could be addressing these words to Michael, but there was no one else about. Uneasily aware that this might be some local ruffian, fleeing from the police – he said, ‘It's all right. I understand they mustn't find you.'

The boy did not look like anyone's idea of a ruffian. He put up a hand in what might be a gesture of acknowledgement, then turned and went back around the house's side. Michael waited, but nothing else happened, and whoever the boy had been, and whatever his reasons for getting into the house were, it was nothing to do with Michael. He would mention it to Miss Gilmore, though, and there would probably be some perfectly innocent explanation. But by now he would have given a great deal to be able to get back into his car and drive as far away as possible from this house. It was not just that it was bleak and remote, or that elusive young men whispered sinisterly in its gardens; it was that he was finding it unpleasantly easy to visualize dark echoing rooms beyond those walls – rooms that might hide decaying memories or cobwebbed humans, or in which forgotten tragedies might still linger and sigh. Nell would look at him quizzically if he said that to her, and tell him the place was nothing more than a slightly run-down old house, and what did he expect in a house standing in the most waterlogged part of the country?

The thought of Nell's sharp bright logic brought a semblance of reassuring reality back, and Michael stepped up to the massive old front door, and reached for the heavy door knocker. It fell against the thick oak and echoed sonorously inside the house. Michael waited and was just beginning to wonder if Fosse House was empty after all when there was the sound of footsteps from inside. They were slow, rather uneven footsteps, and he remembered that Luisa Gilmore was in her seventies.

The door opened, and a thin lady stood in the doorway. A dusty light illuminated a large hall behind her.

With only a faint question in his tone, Michael said, ‘Miss Gilmore? I'm Michael Flint.'

‘Dr Flint. Come inside,' said Luisa Gilmore, and, as if conforming to all the opening lines of sinister ladies dwelling in remote mansions, added, ‘I've been expecting you.'

She stood back, and Michael stepped over the threshold.

T
he inside of Fosse House was much as he had expected. It was vaguely shabby and run down, and there was a faint dimness everywhere – not so much from lack of care as gradual decay from the damp that must seep through the walls and stones and lay a quenching bloom on mirrors and bright surfaces.

But if the house was run down, its owner was not. Luisa Gilmore was certainly in her seventies and she leaned slightly on a walking stick, but as she led Michael across the big panelled hall, although she limped slightly, her movements were sharp and coordinated. She did not appear to subscribe to modern ideas about preserving youth or keeping up with modern fashion; she wore a dark-blue dress of the style Michael thought was referred to as classic, and there was a shawl around her shoulders – although that might be against Fosse House's coolness. Her hair, which was silver, was brushed in a general style that, like the dress, might have belonged to any era.

She ushered him into a room which she referred to as the small sitting-room but which was still twice as big as Michael's own sitting room in Oxford. It was not very well lit, but when she sat down in a wing armchair, gesturing him to a seat facing her, the light from a low lamp fell across her face and he thought that she must have been very good-looking in her younger days. But he also thought her pallor was more than the pallor of age – that it might be the pallor of illness. Or was it Morticia Addams after all?
Don't be absurd.

He expressed to Luisa the gratitude of himself and the Director of Music for being allowed access to Fosse House's annals.

‘I hope you'll find useful material,' said Luisa. ‘Would you like a cup of tea or coffee before you drive along to the village? Or perhaps a glass of sherry?'

It was clear she did not want him to start work that evening and even clearer that she would prefer him to go as soon as politeness allowed, so Michael thought sherry would be the easiest and the quickest option. It came in fragile, thin-stemmed glasses, and it was so rich and strong that it would probably lay him flat before he had driven fifty yards. Setting it down after three sips, he explained how he hoped to approach the task ahead.

‘I'll let you have a note of everything I make use of, of course, but while I'm here I don't need to intrude on you or your day at all. If you're happy to leave me with the various papers on the Palestrina Choir I'll just quietly get on with it.'

‘You will have lunch here, of course.'

‘Well, thank you. There's no need for you to go to any trouble. Just a sandwich will do.'

‘It won't be any trouble. I have cleaning and cooking help on several mornings. Someone will be coming in tomorrow morning, and lunch can be prepared for you.' So might a duchess have referred to unknown underlings who would do whatever they were bidden.

‘Most of the papers are in the library,' she said, getting to her feet. ‘I'll show you before you go – I thought it would probably be the best place for you to work. Let me go ahead, then I can switch on lights for you. This is rather a dark house.'

‘I liked the lights you put at the front windows when I arrived,' said Michael. ‘It was very welcoming to see that.'

She gave him rather a sharp look, but only led him across the hall without speaking. Michael noticed that the slightly limping gait was more strongly marked than he had previously realized. He also saw that she glanced uneasily around as they went, and he wondered if she was not alone in the house after all. Was there someone here she did not want him to know about or to meet? He was about to tell her about seeing the boy earlier, but as soon as she opened the door to the library he forgot about Gothic heroines and young men with leaf-blown scars. The atmosphere and the scents of old leather and vellum, the crowded shelves and stacks of what looked like manuscripts and unbound books, beckoned invitingly and insistently. Come in and unravel the past, said the books and the stored-away papers. Find the pathways into the long-ago, for it's not very far away, not that particular part of the past you're looking for. On a more practical note, there were several deep, soft chairs drawn up to the old fireplace, as well as a large library-table under the window. Michael smiled at the room and knew if the research took longer than the planned two days it would be no hardship.

Luisa drew the curtains against the night. ‘The storm is returning,' she said. ‘If you listen, you can hear it coming in from the fens. I sometimes think it almost sounds like whispering voices.' Without giving him time to think how best to answer this, she said, ‘So you will be as well to set off now, Dr Flint. With a storm brewing, the road from here to the village centre is an unpleasant one in the dark.'

Michael was about to say he would leave right away, when he caught sight of a thick folder placed on the table, together with a deep cardboard box, both clearly marked ‘Palestrina Choir: 1900–1914'.

It was impossible to ignore them. He sat on the edge of the table and opened the folder, which contained thick wodges of handwritten notes on various sizes of paper, clearly from several different decades. The box held a mass of miscellaneous material, including envelopes of what looked like press cuttings, old theatre or concert programmes, and a number of music scores in a cracked plastic sleeve. These last were largely incomprehensible to Michael, but J.B. would seize on them eagerly. In addition were several pages of typed notes, which looked as if they had been taken from reference books, and which, at first glance, gave a brief outline of the Choir's creation.