The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery (33 page)

The shouts came again, and I recognized the voice as Stephen's, although I could no longer tell what he was saying. He had gone along the tunnel path, and he was at the back of the house, staring across the dark gardens. I followed his line of vision and saw the blurred figure of a female running towards the walled garden. There was a faint screech of sound as the gate was opened, and she ran through it. And then— I can't exactly say she vanished, which would be absurd, but she seemed to somehow melt into the darkness.

Stephen went after her at once, going through the iron gate, calling out as he did so.

‘
Leonora …
' The name lay on the air, as fragile and insubstantial as silver filigree.

That was when the shadows in the walled garden reared up and were suddenly and frighteningly no longer shadows but men. Even from where I stood I could see who they were. Niemeyer's men.

It was instantly obvious what had happened. Karl Niemeyer had sent his men after us – in his vindictive, selfish determination to be revenged for his brother's shooting he had ignored the war and had sent soldiers to England, purely to recapture one man. Heaven knows how long they had been out there, but they had trapped Stephen in the walled garden. I edged closer, considering and discarding half a dozen plans. If there had only been two soldiers I might have risked a surprise attack and hoped to get Stephen away, but there were four, all armed. I tiptoed closer to get a clearer view and recognized two of the soldiers from Holzminden. The fat and essentially stupid Hauptfeldwebel Barth, and a younger man called Hugbert Edreich. Seeing Edreich gave me a glimmer of hope, because he had been a kindly and unexpectedly sensitive gaoler in the camp, always trying to help, certainly sympathetic to the likes of Stephen.

The two soldiers whom I did not know had taken Stephen's arms, and they were dragging him against an ivy-covered wall. He was struggling, shouting to them to let him go, calling for Leonora again.

‘Leonora,' he cried. ‘Please – oh, please …'

Edreich was looking about him, almost as if he might be seeking some way of preventing what was about to happen, but the other three soldiers were already raising their rifles. Then – and this is the part that grips at my vitals like steel fingers – they fixed the bayonets to the rifles' muzzles. It seemed Hauptfeldwebel Barth intended to carry out Niemeyer's orders to the last tortuous letter. Bayoneting. That had been the brutal sentence on Stephen, and I could not believe they would do it. But they were already tying him to a tree trunk, binding him tightly with a length of rope. He was sobbing and struggling, and I tensed my muscles, ready to bound forward. But it was already too late. The soldiers lined up, the bayonets tilted, and the order was rapped out. The men ran at the imprisoned figure. I heard the clash of bayonets, and I heard someone shouting. Then a single gunshot rang out.

The shocking thing – the thing that will remain with me all my life – was that the soldiers seemed not have heard the gunshot, and they continued with their grisly work. But Stephen was already dead. He had sagged against the tree, and something that was black in the moonlight ran down his face from his forehead.

From where I stood, I saw Hugbert Edreich very quietly and stealthily put a pistol back into the holder at his belt.

And now I am writing this in the long drawing-room of Fosse House, and my mind is scalded with the pity of it, and with pain and remorse. But within the anguish that I did not save Stephen is one tiny shred of comfort. He did not have to suffer the agony of being bayoneted. That single gunshot fired by Hugbert Edreich was done as an act of mercy – I
know
it was, I know it as surely as if Edreich had told me so. At the end, unable to save him, he gave Stephen a quick, clean death.

But even now I can spare only a small part of my mind for Stephen, for Leonora is filling my thoughts. I have no idea where she is. What I do know, though, is that the indistinct figure I saw running into the walled garden – the figure Stephen called to and followed – was not Leonora. It could not have been. Leonora could not run so swiftly and smoothly. She had a club foot, and she could not run at all …

Nell pushed away the remaining pages and went, almost blindly, to stand at the window, not looking at Michael, not looking at anything. When Michael went to her she turned away from him – the first time she had ever done so. She was not crying, but there was a dreadful blankness in her eyes, and Michael waited, not wanting to intrude, understanding that she was struggling with a deep, confused emotion.

At last, Nell looked at him. In a tight, desperate voice, she said, ‘The figure they saw— The figure Stephen followed into the walled garden— Iskander was right to say it wasn't Leonora. What was it Booth Gilmore said about time bleeding backwards?'

‘That's just a mad theory,' said Michael uneasily.

‘But it's not, is it? Because I was the figure they saw. Stephen followed me into the walled garden – he thought I was Leonora. If he hadn't done that, he wouldn't have been caught. He wouldn't have died. I led him there – I led him straight into the hands of those murderers.'

Michael said, very forcefully, ‘Yes, he would have died – that was inevitable. The soldiers wouldn't have waited very long, you know. When night fell, they would have broken into the house and dragged him out. It's what they tried to do the first time, only they saw—' He stopped, the words of Hugbert Edreich's letter in his mind.

I saw him open the curtains in a downstairs room and look out
, Hugbert had written.
There was a lamp shining in the room, and we all saw him …
But who had they seen? thought Michael. I was the one who opened the curtains to look out of that window … There was a lamp shining from the desk behind me …

He thought he might tell Nell about this later, but for the moment, he said, ‘My dear love, you don't believe that stuff about time bleeding backwards any more than I do. Stephen was never going to get away from those men – it was nothing to do with what you did or didn't do. And it might sound weird, but I'm inclined to be glad that Hugbert Edreich had the – the guts and the humanity to do what he did.'

This time when he put out his hand, Nell came into his arms, and clung to him. She was still not crying, but her eyes were dark and blurred with emotion. Michael felt something twist at his heart. ‘I can't bear seeing you like this,' he said.

‘Drama queen,' she said, managing a smile. ‘Sorry. I think I'm glad Hugbert did it, too. I suppose he saw it was impossible to fight the other three soldiers – they were armed. But he wanted to save Stephen from the bayoneting.' She thought for a moment then, in a voice much more like her normal one, said, ‘It even gives some logic to what Hugbert's wife said. She said he never spoke of what happened that night— But he had those nightmares, when he dreamed he was walking towards the house. When he thought Stephen came out to meet him. That was his guilt, wasn't it?'

‘I think,' said Michael, ‘that Hugbert came to reasonable terms with his guilt. He had done what he genuinely believed was the right thing. Let's think he had a fairly happy life – or as happy as any of us can expect.'

‘You're getting awfully philosophical, aren't you? Shall we finish Iskander's statement?'

‘Can you cope with it?'

‘I can't cope with not knowing how it ends. Yes, of course we'll finish it.'

‘In that case I'll make us some coffee,' said Michael, heading for the kitchen. ‘I don't know if Iskander's got any more revelations, but I think I'll keep a clear head, just in case.'

The coffee brought a note of normality to the unreality and the horror of Iskander's account. Michael set the cups down on a low table and turned up the heating. Wilberforce, with the air of one who had been waiting patiently for this, padded across to the electric fire and lay down in front of it.

Michael sat down next to Nell again, and reached for the closing pages of Iskander's notes.

It's one o'clock. The smallest of the small hours. I have searched the house for Leonora, and once I was sure Niemeyer's men had left, I searched the grounds as well – difficult to do at this hour of the night, but not impossible, and I certainly could not leave it until daybreak. I wrapped Stephen's army greatcoat around him – he is lying against an old tree, and tomorrow I shall do something about making a grave for him.

But I had to find Leonora – I still have to find her. I walked along several of the lanes – the unknown church was chiming midnight as I did so. But I can find no trace of her, and no clue to where she might be, and so I returned here. The few belongings we managed to bring with us are all still in a bedroom cupboard, so clearly when she left this house she had no time to take anything with her. Did she flee for safety when Edreich and the soldiers arrived? Is she cowering in some dark, lonely hideaway, frightened to return? That thought is almost more than I can bear.

For the first time in my life I don't know what to do. Sleep is unthinkable …

… but after all it seems I must have succumbed to sleep, for I see that the time has ticked around to three o'clock. The fire has burned lower, and the room is colder.

I have the strongest feeling that something woke me. Something insistent, demanding, pulled me out of that dreary, exhausted sleep. I have no idea what it was though, for the room looks exactly the same.

It is half past three, and I know what woke me. A few minutes ago I heard sounds, unmistakable and insistent. Somewhere inside Fosse House, something is tapping on a wall.

It might be a bird, or a trapped animal. It might be an open window, or a door caught in a current of wind. It might even be Niemeyer's men, returning for me. If so, they shall have a good run for their money. But I don't think it is the soldiers.

I have lit a second candle and armed myself with a heavy brass paperweight and a silver-handled letter opener – absurd, makeshift weapons, but better than none at all. I am about to embark on another search of the house to trace the source of the tapping.

Four o'clock. I've been all over the house again, and I can find no explanation for the sounds. Everywhere is locked and secure, windows are fastened, doors are closed. But I can still hear the sounds – they are a little fainter now, as if whatever is making them is growing weaker. I think they are loudest in the main hall, but there is nowhere in the hall for anything to be trapped—

Or is there? Old English houses have panelling, and Fosse House has some very fine panelling in its hall. Supposing there's a concealed cupboard? If I take Fosse House apart, I have to find out what the sounds are. Because Leonora must be somewhere.

Later

Dawn is breaking through the windows, and I am writing this from out of the most astonishing mixture of emotions I ever expected to feel. But it is second nature for me to record everything, and this, too, is part of Stephen's story, so I am setting it down.

As the clock chimed the half hour after four, a faint dawn was filtering into the house. Even so, I fitted a fresh candle into the holder and set off to examine the panelled walls of the hall. It was still shrouded in darkness, and the light from my candle flickered wildly as if invisible creatures were trying to snuff it. At first I thought the sounds had stopped, but when I began to tap the panelling – hoping to find a cupboard – they started again.

My unknown reader may imagine my feelings. Somewhere in this brooding old house, with young Gilmore's body still lying in its grotesque huddle outside, someone was trapped. That someone might be my beloved Leonora. As I moved round the hall, my mind was tumbling with one particular thread that weaves its grim tale through the macabre literature of so many cultures. The doomed young girl, the virgin bride, accidentally walled up or entombed, mistakenly buried alive in a cell or a cupboard during a game … Not to be found until years later, as a poor, dried corpse … How much truth had there ever been in that story? Was it about to become a truth tonight? If she was here, trapped, would I find her in time?

Halfway round the hall's panelling, there was a different sound – a faint hollowness. My heart leapt, and holding the candle closer I saw the outline of a small door. There was a tiny keyhole, but when I pushed the door it moved, and when I applied more pressure, it swung inwards. Holding the candle aloft, I went down a flight of stone steps.

Halfway down I called out, ‘Leonora? Are you here?'

My voice echoed in the enclosed darkness, then died away, and there was only the thick silence, pressing in on me. My skin was crawling with fear and with the horror of what I might be about to find, but, stepping carefully, I went all the way down the steps.

The tapping had ceased, and there was only the sound of my own slightly too-fast breathing, driven by the thudding of my heart.

I lifted the candle. A stone room – a cellar of some kind – with a few discarded items of household junk, and—

And a massive carved chest crouching in the corner. Carved and domed-lidded, and bound with thick chains and a padlock. In the candlelight it took on a dreadful sinister significance. The oaken chest, half eaten by the worm, where the ill-starred heroine found a grave … The living tomb …

As I stood there, a faint scratching came from within the chest. It was so faint it might have been made by goblin nails against a frost-rimed window-pane. It was so fragile it might be the last fading signal of a dying girl …

I set down the candle and knelt before the chest, dragging uselessly at the chains, cursing in Russian, calling her name, and pleading with any gods that might be listening to help me – I probably called on a few denizens of the darker side of heaven, as well. I did not care. If Leonora was in there, I would trade my immortal soul to rescue her and have her alive and living.