This House is Haunted (19 page)

“I don’t know what to say, Eliza,” she said eventually. “Truly I don’t. It still astonishes me that Santina could have done such a thing.”

“Were you there the night it happened?” I asked.

“A little afterwards, yes. I didn’t see Miss Tomlin’s body, nor did I see James. Alex was attending to him. But I saw Santina. The police were taking her away. There was … there was blood on her face. And across the front of her dress. It was quite dreadful.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“A little,” she said. “Of course, at the time I didn’t know what had happened. I assumed there had been a break-in of some
sort. I thought perhaps the Westerleys had disturbed a burglar and the scene had ended in violence, that only Santina had escaped unscathed. It never occurred to me for a moment that she could have been the aggressor.”

“And how did she seem?” I asked, leaning forward.

Madge thought about it, concentrating hard. “Composed,” she replied eventually. “Quite relaxed. Like someone who has finally succeeded in doing something she has been planning for a long time. There was an other-worldliness to her, if you understand what I mean. She seemed more like a spirit than a woman. She seemed unreal.”

“And did you see her again?”

“Several times,” she replied. “At the trial, of course. I was called as a witness, as was Alex, to express my opinion of her character and of her rather unusual activities in the time leading up to the crime. And then again at the sentencing. And then once more, on the morning she was hanged. I didn’t tell Alex that I was going to see her then. He wouldn’t have understood. But you have to realize, Eliza, that it was a traumatic time for all of us. We are none of us the better for it yet. I believe the entire village is still suffering from the trauma. But I needed to see her. If I tell you what happened, will you respect my confidence? Will you tell no one else?”

“I swear it,” I said. “I need to know, you see. Because the truth is, I sense her here. In this house.”

Madge stared at me. “What do you mean?” she asked, sitting back a little.

“Do you believe in the afterlife?” I asked.

“I believe in God, if that’s what you mean. I believe in the day of judgement.”

“And you believe in heaven and hell?”

“Of course.”

“And what if,” I began, able to hear how ludicrous my words sounded but needing to hear them said aloud, “what if a soul departs this life but is neither in heaven nor hell? What if they remain?” She stared at me and swallowed, uncertain how to respond. I shook my head, dismissing this. “You said you saw her one last time,” I said. “Where was it? At the prison?”

“Yes. On the morning she was to hang. I felt that, despite everything that had happened, she should see a familiar face that day. And so I went to her. I told no one. I lied to Alex, a thing I have never done before or since.”

“And what happened?” I asked. “What did she do? What did she say?”

“I’ll never forget it,” she replied, looking away. “I still wake at night sometimes with the memory of it. I was brought to a solitary room where—”

“Eliza Caine.”

I half jumped from my chair and Madge startled too and we both turned round to see Isabella and Eustace standing at the doorway.

“Children,” I shouted, furious to find them eavesdropping. How long had they been standing there? How much had they heard? “What are you doing here?”

“Eustace hurt himself,” said Isabella, and the boy stepped forward and I saw a large gash along his kneecap, the wound looking not too deep but the blood seeping from it nevertheless. “He fell over on the gravel.”

“I didn’t fall,” said Eustace, his chin trembling as he tried not to give in to tears. “I got a surprise, that’s all. The old man surprised me; I’d never seen him outside before.”

“Sit down, Eustace,” I said, and Madge stood up and settled him on her chair. “I’ll have to wash the wound out. You’ll be a brave boy, won’t you?”

“I’ll try,” he said, snuffling a little.

Madge sat next to him and put an arm around his shoulders and he seemed comforted to have her there. I supposed that he had known her all his life. I went to the sink, put the plug in and turned on the tap, letting it fill while I went to the pantry for a clean cloth. I found one without much difficulty and returned to the kitchen, turned the tap off and plunged both my hands, the cloth between them, into the base of the sink, intending to soak it through in order to clean Eustace’s leg with the fresh, cold water. I plunged them into the water deeply, the level above my wrists, and I can recall the curious sensation even now. For a moment, a split second, I sensed that something was wrong, something felt unusual, the water was not as icy as I had expected. This thought could only have been there for a fraction of a thousandth of a second, however, for then I screamed, a hideous yell, pulled my hands from the water and fell backwards, holding my scalded hands in the air before me, the skin already turning red, preparing to blister, the nails completely white against the scarlet skin. The water had been at boiling point; the tap that never produced anything but icy-cold water had filled the sink with enough boiling water to almost rip the skin from my hands before I could tend to Eustace’s wound. I screamed and fell backwards and the sound of my screams was terrifying even to me as I looked across and saw Isabella with her hands over her ears, Eustace staring at me with his eyes and mouth wide open, and Madge lifting herself bodily from her chair and rushing towards me.

And yet, despite the agonizing pain that I was suffering, and the awareness that it was only going to get worse and worse over the next few hours and days, there was one small part of my brain that disassociated itself from this terrible agony and focused on a single line of Eustace’s, a simple phrase that repeated itself over and over and made me wonder what he could possibly have meant by it.

The old man surprised me; I’d never seen him outside before
.

Chapter Sixteen

I
DECIDED THAT WE
, the children and I, should get away from Gaudlin Hall for a day. I was suffocating under the weight of so many secrets being withheld and only revealed to me when I forced them out of one of the residents of the village. I quite understood now why the previous governess, Miss Bennet, had used such underhand tactics to find a replacement. I assumed that she too had learned of the fate of her four unfortunate predecessors and could not bear to stay any longer. Whether she had suffered as many “accidents” as had befallen me, I did not know. At my lowest moments, it occurred to me that I might do exactly as she had done: place an advertisement in a newspaper, pretend by the use of my initial instead of my Christian name that I was master of this place and find someone to take my burden away from me. It was likely, after all, that there were any number of young women seeking a change in their circumstances. Like Miss Bennet, I could be away from Gaudlin within the week if luck was on my side.

Only one thing prevented me from undertaking such a course of action: the children. Or, more precisely, Eustace. From the moment I arrived to discover that the Westerley offspring had
been left to fend entirely for themselves, I had felt a compunction to take care of them. This had grown as I had got to know them, and in Eustace’s case I was already feeling something approaching love, for he was a dear boy, always ready with a smile or a precocious comment, a child who was quite clearly troubled by the things that were taking place around him, things that he understood as little as I did. Isabella was a more difficult study. She was friendly towards me, always polite, but the distrust was obvious. She would not let her guard down—perhaps she had done so in the past and been disappointed—and so I did not feel as close to her as I did her brother. It made for some tense moments between us.

At times like this I wondered how different my life might have been had my sister Mary not died so soon after her birth. Was my protectiveness towards the children, not just the Westerleys but also the small girls who had been entrusted to me at St. Elizabeth’s, a result of losing a sister before she could even be conscious of my existence? This was not something I liked to dwell on but it was there, occasionally, at the back of my mind. A whisper of neediness on my part that would not be muted.

My hands began to heal and Mrs. Livermore—Nurse Livermore, I suppose I should call her—helped me to remove the heavy bandages a week after Dr. Toxley had applied them. As the gauze was stripped away, my heart was filled with trepidation, so nervous was I at what might be discovered underneath. I watched her face and, although she tried to disguise it, a grimace crossed her features, an expression that suggested she had seen some unpleasant things before but this was in line with the worst of them.

“How does it look?” I asked, afraid to throw my glance down, but she was not one for delicacy.

“You have eyes, Governess,” she growled. “See for yourself.”

I closed them for a moment, breathed in deeply, then looked down. The skin was raw and tender after a week of being tightly wrapped, and yellow with the detritus of the cooling balm the doctor had applied between the flesh and the fabric, and I knew that in time some of this would go away, but the scars that remained, those raw and inflamed grooves of scarlet, would, I knew, never fade. The burns had been too severe. They would serve as my Gaudlin scars. The presence, for that was how I defined it now, that strange presence that was opposed to my being at Gaudlin Hall had scalded me so badly that I would bear these disfigurements for ever. I tried to flex my fingers and, to my relief, I could do so, although not without a great deal of pain. At least sensation remained. I would rather have that than not.

“Leave them be for now,” said Mrs. Livermore, walking over to the sink and washing away the filth from the bandages. “Let the air at them. They’ll soon lose their temper.”

Naturally, I was by now quite frightened of the presence. It had blown me off my dandy-horse, thrown me from the windows of my bedroom, turned the ice-cold water to a scald. I also believed that it had been responsible for my almost falling under the passing train on the day I arrived in Norfolk. It knew who I was. Perhaps it had followed Miss Bennet to the station, and recognized me as her replacement and thought to get rid of me before I could even arrive at the Hall. Yes, I admit that I was frightened of it, but I felt a strength and resilience nonetheless and was determined not to be beaten.

And I would never allow it to harm the children, although that did not seem to be its intention anyway.

Dr. Toxley had delivered a jar of a thick white ointment to the Hall with instructions that I should ease it gently into the
skin of my hands every six hours for a week, and I was grateful for his consideration, for it helped to soothe the burning pains which threatened to strike up every few minutes. It was a day or two later, when I felt sufficiently recovered from my ordeal, that I settled upon the idea of a day trip.

“We’re not supposed to leave here,” said Isabella as the children finished their breakfast that morning and I told them of my plan. She had brought a copy of Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
to the table and I thought it an extraordinary book for one so young to be reading. I had tried it myself a year before and found it a frightful bore. “We’re meant to stay. In the house.”

“Well, I never heard such nonsense,” I exclaimed, drinking the last of my tea but not turning to look at her as I spoke. “Whoever said such a thing?”

She didn’t answer, simply turned her head away and continued to chew reflectively on a piece of toast. Outside, I could hear Heckling’s dog, Pepper, scratching at the door, whimpering for a moment, then running off.

“It’s not healthy to be stuck inside these walls all day,” I added. “A little fresh air can do wonders for the spirits.”

“We go outside and play,” protested Eustace.

“Yes, of course you do,” I said. “But always here in the grounds. Wouldn’t you like a change of scenery?”

“No,” said Isabella and “I would, rather,” replied Eustace at the same time, incurring a furious look from his sister that made him shrink in the seat a little. “Well, I would,” he muttered to no one in particular.

“We’ll have no classes today,” I said firmly, determined that my voice would be the one that would carry the argument. “We’ll have a field trip. That can be just as educational, don’t you agree? In London, at the end of the school year, I always
brought my small girls to the House of Commons for an afternoon’s education, and once we were even permitted into the Strangers’ Gallery.”

“A field trip to where?” asked Isabella suspiciously.

“Into the village, I expect,” said Eustace, a bored expression crossing his face now.

“Goodness me, no,” I replied, shaking my head. “Why, we see the village all the time. How about I ask Mr. Heckling to take us in the coach to Norwich? We could be there in less than two hours and spend the afternoon enjoying the city.”

“What’s in Norwich?” asked Eustace.

“A lot, I’m sure,” I said. I had never been to Norwich, of course, except for my brief experience passing through it when my train arrived in the station on that first night. “There will be shops and playgrounds. Perhaps a museum or two. There’s a great cathedral in the city. I was reading about it in a book I discovered in your father’s library.” Isabella’s head turned to me as I made reference to her father and her eyes narrowed a little. I felt immediately self-conscious that I had said this; perhaps she didn’t want me to use the library. Perhaps she didn’t like to hear mention of her father. But then he was another of the reasons I was desperate to get away for a day. As much sympathy as I felt for the poor man, who surely deserved the respite of a quiet death to the horrific incarceration he endured at the top of the house, I nevertheless felt repulsed knowing that he was nearby, gasping for breath, struggling to eat, having his every need, both personal and impersonal, taken care of by Mrs. Livermore. It was callous of me, perhaps, but I was young. I would have preferred to see him in a hospital than living in the same house as me, even if it was his house in the first place. It felt abnormal that four of us were living here but only three of us ever met.