by Neil Spring
He frowned, and I knew that I had spoken to the deep yearning within him that was so much a part of his energy. And, to be honest, I felt more than a little relieved to have finally owned up to the truth.
But I also worried that Price’s petulant side, the wild side that too often ruled his judgement, might push him into driving back to London. And then what? Without his peculiar expertise, I’d stand no chance of solving the case. No, I needed Price. And if I was going to keep him onside and regain his trust, I would have to throw him something else.
I remembered Wall’s words when he had set me on this mission. ‘If Vernon is right, if there is a deeper agenda here, something pernicious or even insidious, then you’re the right person to expose it, aren’t you?’
His eyes flickered with indecision. By appealing to his sense of moral purpose I thought I might have succeeded in getting through to him, but then he veered in a direction that surprised me. ‘Sarah, you seem so willing to trust Vernon. But have you considered that perhaps, just perhaps, it was Vernon who told me I’d find you that night at the Brixton Picture Palace?’
I stared at him. ‘How utterly absurd! That would mean Vernon was following me – spying on me. No. Harry, no. What an ugly thing to say!’
‘Can Vernon draw?’
‘Can he draw? What sort of question is that?’
‘A serious one.’
‘Harry, I don’t know. Why on earth is that relevant?’ I shook my head, confused. ‘Listen, Harry, Vernon came to me directly. And besides, why would he follow me? You’re trying to manipulate me, to break my trust in him.’
We sat there in silence, watching long shadows fall across the rolling downs beyond the window. Our conversation had brought a lump to my throat. I was afraid I had tarnished his trust in me so badly that we might never again restore our friendship, and I longed to know what he was thinking.
Price looked sadly at me as he said, ‘So many secrets between us, Sarah. Too many secrets.’
He reached out his hand across the table, as though he wanted me to give him something. I knew what it was before he even mentioned it: the projection slide I had found on the floor in the picture house in London.
‘You asked me to examine it,’ he said. ‘In fact, we agreed on the telephone that you would bring it with you. So let me see it.’
‘I told you, it’s not—’
‘Important? I know. So, what’s the harm, eh?’ He flashed me a smile. ‘Go and get it.’
With a sigh of exasperation, I went out of the officers’ mess hall and into the chilly night. I would have to be quick. It wouldn’t be too long before the mess was filled with soldiers hungry for their Sunday night dinner.
At the bottom of the steps, I turned left onto a concrete path that led me to Hut Three. As I approached the hut, I saw someone coming towards me.
Was it Sidewinder? I thought I recognised the shock of white hair, but it was hard to be sure; the glimpse was fleeting, and seconds later the figure had hurried away in the other direction.
Quickening my step, I had the sudden, suspicious idea that it was indeed Sidewinder, and that he had been nosing around in my hut – perhaps looking for my notes? That was probably just my paranoia, but the idea did little to stem the rising unease I had been feeling since our earlier confrontation with Hartwell.
A woman in the road . . .
This was still in my mind when I entered Hut Three and fished the hand-painted lantern slide from my belongings. When I returned to the officers’ mess hall, I found Price standing before one of the tall sash windows, gazing pensively out over Salisbury Plain, which was now almost completely obscured by the gathering darkness.
I handed him the lantern slide, and he took it to the long table at which we had been sitting. Here the light was brighter. Next, he retrieved a magnifying glass from his battered briefcase and began to examine the slide with assiduous care.
‘There are two children depicted on this slide,’ he said, squinting. ‘Do you have any idea who they might be?’
‘None whatsoever. Do you?’
A moment’s silence.
‘Not a clue.’
With some haste, he turned the lantern slide over, eyes narrowing as he focused on its rough wooden frame. ‘There’s a date inscribed here.’
‘I’d missed that.’
‘Maybe you didn’t want to see it.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Never mind.’ He shook his head, and carried on as if he’d never uttered the enigmatic remark. ‘Well, well. This is a find indeed – a very early example of a magic lantern slide. They were made from paintings or photographs, suspended in crude projectors, then lit from behind by candlelight.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘Entertainment, mainly. In the hands of a talented showman, accompanied by musical instruments and ingenious sound effects, magic lanterns dazzled hundreds of people with the most spectacular dissolving images. As the lanterns became cheaper to purchase, people began experimenting with them at home.’
‘How old is this lantern slide?
His eyes narrowed as he held the slide closer. ‘The date inscribed here is 1880.’
‘Over fifty years ago.’
‘Long before your time, Sarah.’ He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘And you said originally you felt a connection between this object and the picture house in Brixton, as if this lantern slide drew you there?’
I nodded; that sounded ridiculous now, but it was true.
‘When you first touched this lantern slide, you felt . . .’
‘Transported somewhere else,’ I said, remembering the peculiar sensation of floating away, the glow of the sun on my neck, the breeze against my face. I waited for Price’s cynical frown, and when it didn’t come I had to wonder why.
‘Did you recognise the location?’ he asked.
‘No, why?’
Price said nothing. He seemed unsettled – agitated.
‘Harry?’
‘Leave this with me,’ he said quickly, slipping the lantern slide into his breast pocket. Just then, a powerful gust of wind rattled the panes of glass in the sash windows.
‘Harry, is there anything about Imber, our investigation – anything at all – that you haven’t told me?’
Immediately, he shook his head, but I didn’t like the look that passed across his face right then. I thought I had come to read Harry Price rather well, and I had the sense now that he was lying.
‘Tomorrow night then,’ he said, before I could even think of probing further, ‘we end this. And return home.’
Back to London. Where we would part company.
‘Tomorrow.’ I almost gave a sad nod, but dignity made it brusque. ‘And the commander wants Vernon to come here. Agree some helpful public messaging for the newspapers.’
Price bristled at that. ‘Bring him, then, if you really think it necessary.’
I told him I did think it necessary. Very much so.
*
After leaving Price to his dinner, I went in search of Hartwell. One of the soldiers milling around in the corridor that led to the sickbay told me Hartwell had gone that way, so that was where I headed. The door to every room here was open, aside from two. One of those doors led into the room reserved for Sergeant Edwards. Inside, I could hear the poor man sobbing.
Looking back, it’s easy to say I should have checked in on Edwards, asked what was wrong. Hindsight is a haunting thing.
Instead, I knocked on the other door. There was no reply.
Hartwell is resting, I told myself. Leave him. You will see him tomorrow.
And under normal circumstances that would have been the right thing to do. But I kept remembering the bell tower; the awful moment his wife had dropped; the way he had crumbled to the floor at the sight of her body.
&nbs
p; Truthfully, I was also still a little curious about his earlier remark: ‘A woman in the road . . .’
I turned the handle slowly, and looked into the darkness.
‘Excuse me? Mr Hartwell?’
Nothing. Just a narrow bed against the far wall, bulked with pillows.
Feeling guilty for trespassing, I began closing the door. That was when I heard the creak of the iron bedstead. I peered into the gloom and saw, lying on the bed, cocooned in sheets, a figure curled on its side.
‘Mr Hartwell?’ I said, this time in barely more than a whisper. ‘Are you asleep?’
Again, there was no reply – but this time I felt his eyes on me. No, I saw his eyes, gleaming in the cold light that slipped in from the hall.
He’s not asleep, I thought. He’s watching you.
I began to close the door. And that was when he spoke to me, in a voice that was low and menacing.
‘You’ve decided to go through with the séance.’
Turning back towards him, I cleared my throat. ‘Yes, sir.’
An expectant silence spun out. There was no need to be afraid – Hartwell was a good man. Indeed, he had my fullest sympathy. Nevertheless, I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t feel a shudder tremble through me right then.
‘I apologise,’ I said. ‘This must be inconceivably painful for you. But under the circumstances we feel we need to test Sidewinder’s claims.’
‘Why? To indulge the fantasies of an egotistical madman, or purely to satisfy your own selfish curiosities?’
There was something about his tone that didn’t sit entirely well with me. It lacked conviction, and I was curious to know why.
‘Is there something you want to tell me, Mr Hartwell?’
A switch was flicked and light bloomed through the room. The bald and bearded Hartwell had thrown back the sheets and was sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand on the bedside lamp. Amazingly, he was still wearing the black suit he had worn to the Imber church service. I couldn’t be sure if he had been crying, but from his flushed face and bloodshot eyes I thought it likely.
‘Sir,’ I continued, ‘your poor wife was obviously drawn to the old mill for a reason. We want to try to work out why, to provide some explanation for what happened to her. And for you, some comfort. Sincerely, sir, my heart reaches out to you for your loss.’
‘Come in,’ he gestured, his voice softer, ‘and please close the door.’
I hesitated briefly; I suppose any woman in my situation would have done. But I did as he asked.
‘May I sit?’ I asked, indicating the wooden chair next to his bed.
He nodded yes.
‘Sir, I can’t begin to fathom how you must feel, but may I offer some advice?’
I was remembering how Price had helped me, one year earlier, when my nerves were frayed from grief and guilt. ‘Harry is well instructed in the ways of hypnosis – helping patients achieve intensely deep levels of relaxation by inducing altered states of consciousness.’
‘Hypnosis?’ Hartwell scoffed. ‘Party-piece tricks.’
‘I wouldn’t say that actually. I’ve undergone it myself.’
‘What does it feel like?’ Hartwell asked, and for a moment I was back in Price’s laboratory, on the chaise longue, listening to his soothing voice, deep and low, taking me back, back.
‘Like being asleep and awake at the same time,’ I said, remembering slipping into the trance, my hands and feet going cold, my eyelids quivering; feeling distant from my body and hearing myself become uncharacteristically loquacious.
But still, exactly what sort of information – fanatical delusions or buried memories – I had divulged to Price during my trance eluded me. The only constant was the sound of his voice: insisting, probing, urging me to tell him . . . what?
If only I could remember.
And then it struck me – perhaps I didn’t need to remember. Perhaps the details of whatever I had uttered would be somewhere in Price’s files, at his laboratory . . .
‘Miss Grey?’
I snapped back. ‘If you wish to try hypnotherapy, sir, it can be arranged.’ I smiled and he nodded back. I sensed that a barrier between us had been dismantled a little. ‘Now,’ I said gently, ‘what can you tell me about the Imber mill, its history?’
Silence.
‘Sir, the more you tell me, the more likelihood there is that we can help.’
Hartwell sighed. ‘The mill was built by my grandfather. It had stood on that parcel of land for more than one hundred and fifty years. It was abandoned well before the rest of the village.’
‘And Pierre?’ I asked gently. ‘What can you tell me about your late son?’
Hartwell’s eyes misted over. It was a look I knew well – the same lost and yearning haze I had seen a thousand times in my own mother’s eyes.
‘My son is dead,’ he said dully. ‘Never coming back. If you’d seen him at the end of his life, you’d understand that.’
‘If you don’t mind my asking, sir, exactly how did he die? And when?’
‘Two years ago.’ He smiled sadly, looking down into his lap. ‘Pierre was a brave soldier to the very last. At first, we suspected a simple throat infection, but then the sores came, lesions that wept and wept. When his neck swelled, we worried it was the mumps, but soon—’ He broke off, his voice catching. ‘Soon his neck was as wide as his head, and a thick grey coating had closed over the back of his throat. I should have noticed the symptoms earlier.’
Feebly I said, ‘You weren’t to know—’
‘I was his father!’ Hartwell said bitterly. ‘I would do anything, anything, to have him back.’ His eyelids fluttered closed. ‘Even now, all I can hear is that awful hacking cough. Later, when he was nearing the end, it sounded more like a bark. Some nights, even now, I wake up and I can hear it. I ask myself, how – how in God’s name – could we have allowed that to happen to our little prince? The disease took his vision in the end. The diphtheria, it paralysed—’
‘Oscar—’
‘Please, don’t interrupt me!’ he said, so abruptly I flinched. ‘It paralysed his eyes, swelling the sockets, turning them black.’
I felt a shudder run through me then, picturing the charcoal-eyed child.
‘We nursed him at home.’
‘But surely the hospital would have—’
‘Diseases like that aren’t supposed to afflict families like ours.’
His son became his secret, I thought. Just like mine. The only difference was that my son was out there somewhere, alive in the world, and Hartwell’s son was dead.
And then I remembered something else from earlier that day.
‘I’m sorry to ask this, sir, but today in the church, after your speech, your wife said you had . . . well, she said you had . . .’
‘Blood on my hands?’ Hartwell nodded. ‘Well, it’s true in a sense, isn’t it? I was telling Pierre I loved him, that he was safe, while telling friends and associates, neighbours, that he was recovering from a touch of flu. Have you ever heard anything so pathetic? I lied to my own son. I told him he would be fine. He was only five, but I think he knew that was a lie. Perhaps he even knew he was going to die.’
His eyes fastened on me. ‘You can’t possibly understand what that feels like – to keep that sort of secret.’
I swallowed painfully.
Hartwell looked away, shaking his head. ‘When Pierre died, I felt empty. So many years of longing, praying for a boy to continue the Hartwell legacy, to run the estate – only to have him taken from me. Then my house, my land, was stolen by the army.’ His voice became tear-clogged. ‘Now Marie, bless her soul, is gone, and I am truly alone.’
He held his head in his hands and began rocking back and forth. Feeling awkward and hopelessly sorry for him, I placed a soothing hand on his right shoulder.
‘Mr Hartwell, earlier, in the commander’s office, you said something strange that caught my interest. “A woman in the road.” Those were your words. You were referring to me, I think?’
He lifted his head and gave me a thoughtful, appraising look, made even more perturbing by the words that followed.
‘The words weren’t mine,’ he said finally, as if he would rather forget them. ‘My wife’s.’
‘I see,’ I said, although I didn’t at all. Still, I continued, ‘You said in the church that Marie had lost her mind.’
‘Very possibly she had,’ he said quietly, but the uncertainty in his voice was now unmistakable. He looked at me for a moment, and I recognised his hesitant expression. It was the same look I had seen on the faces of so many other witnesses whose lives had been touched by the paranormal; witnesses who have realised they can live with their experience no longer, and feel the irrepressible need to share it, knowing they can trust you to listen.
And I saw something else on his face: an open honesty. He was ready at last to confide in me.
‘My wife sensed things. Believed she was . . . clairvoyant. At first I thought she was merely creative, and I encouraged her to write, to draw. But the drawings she produced were unsettling – no, worse than unsettling. Disturbing.’
He stood up and looked past me now, eyes wide, voice faint.
‘Even before this business with the mill, Marie believed she had contact with the afterlife. She believed that when she drew, the spirits guided her hand.’
I made a mental of note of that. It could be a vital lead.
‘By the end, I concluded she had been driven mad from the grief. But now . . .’ He looked imploringly at me, an expression of terrible despair across his face. ‘Perhaps I have been blind all these years. Perhaps my dear wife was right after all. It certainly seems she was right about you.’
‘Tell me,’ I said gravely. My heart was beginning to thud. Hard.
He hesitated.
‘My wife had a . . . I suppose the word you would use is “premonition”. She believed she could see events and scenarios yet to be. And there is something else I should have told you before, Miss Grey.’
