The Devil's Promise

by Veronica Bennett

  I took the papers from his grasp, but missed my grip and they tumbled to the floor. Lying on the top of the scattered pile was a cutting of the advertisement Mrs McAllister had put in The Scotsman. I took hold of it and gazed in astonishment.

  Above Lucy McAllister’s name were the words, Have you seen this girl? And from the photograph below it gazed a very familiar face. Pale, with almond-shaped eyes and a tangle of dark hair, arranged loosely over the shoulders of an old-fashioned, apron-fronted silk dress.

  THE SPELL IS WOUND

  Lucy McAllister had disappeared on the night of 8th December,1887.

  It had been a snowy night, and windy, with deep drifts forming. According to the newspaper reports Jamie and I pored over the next morning in his sitting room, her mother and sister saw her that day. They breakfasted together as usual at their cottage in Drumwithie, where they had moved from Stirling after the death of the Reverend McAllister. The elder Miss McAllister, recently engaged to be married to Dr Hamish Buchanan of Drumwithie Castle, had spent the morning sewing her trousseau, while her mother, who was recovering from a bad cold, rested and read the newspaper by the fire. Lucy, an enthusiastic artist, went to her room to work on a drawing. But when she did not appear for luncheon, it was discovered that her cloak and boots had gone, and it was assumed that despite the inclement weather, she had gone out.

  She did not come back that day, or the day after. A search party was dispatched, but nothing was found. Surprisingly, she had taken no luggage with her. All her indoor clothes except her best dress, a pink silk in which she had been photographed only a week before her disappearance, were in her wardrobe. No one could understand why a young girl, happily settled in a loving family, might put on her best dress and go out in the snow, to disappear without trace.

  “Until her ghost appears in the tower room of Drumwithie Castle, almost twenty-three years later,” said Jamie, returning a cutting to the table and leaning back in his chair. “Damn it, Cat, I am absolutely mystified.”

  I was browsing through the other papers. Not all were cuttings; there were photographs and a few letters. The first photograph I showed Jamie made us look at each other sorrowfully. It was an official wedding photograph, mounted on stiff card. Below it were the printed words, “The marriage of Dr Hamish Buchanan of Drumwithie Castle, only son of the late Mr and Mrs Charles Buchanan, and Miss Anne McAllister, elder daughter of the late Reverend Herbert McAllister and Mrs Jean McAllister of Drumwithie. 20th February, 1888.”

  The young Hamish and the even younger Anne stared stiffly into the camera, her long train spread around her, his top hat tilted at the angle favoured by fashionable young Victorians. Beside them stood a slimmer Mrs McAllister, dressed like a duchess in silk damask. Behind were ranged a collection of unrecognizable people, possibly uncles or cousins. My father was not present, though this was before he and Doctor Hamish fell out. Perhaps because of Lucy’s absence, there was no bridesmaid.

  “Good God,” breathed Jamie bleakly, “I have never seen this before.”

  I studied the print. “It is those words, Jamie. ‘Elder daughter.’ If they wished to keep Lucy secret from you, they could not show you this photograph.”

  He examined it too. “They could have separated it from the mount, I suppose,” he said discontentedly. “But no, I am at fault. I should have wondered why there were no pictures of my parents’ wedding in the house. But I did not. I never wondered and I never asked.”

  I held out another photograph. “Look, here is the picture that was used for the newspaper advertisement. Do you think Lucy looks like your mother?”

  “They have the same nose. They probably look like each other in profile.”

  Of course! I knew where I had seen the ragged ghost’s profile before – in the portrait of Anne that hung in the small drawing room. “Tell me who you are!” I had begged the ghost, wondering if she was some forgotten acquaintance. “They do,” I confirmed.

  We looked at the photograph of Jamie’s unknown aunt. Jamie seemed calmer. He sighed a little, turning the picture round and round in his fingers. “Perhaps she ran away because someone had ruined her and she could not face the shame.” He looked at me with a measured, almost amused expression in his face. “If I had the choice of telling my grandmother or running away, I know which I would do!”

  This sounded plausible, though I had a question. “Why run away wearing your best dress and carrying no luggage?” Even Jane Eyre, distressed beyond endurance by her experience with the bigamist Edward Rochester, had not done that. But before Jamie could speak, the thought of Jane Eyre’s predicament thrust an answer into my mind. “Oh!” I laid my hand on his arm. “Do you think she might have been running away to meet someone, to get married? And he jilted her? Oh, poor Lucy!”

  He smiled and covered my hand with his. “My dearest, I fear you are turning the poor girl’s story into one of your penny dreadfuls.”

  Offended, I withdrew my hand. “For the last time, I do not read penny dreadfuls! I am speculating about what might have happened, exactly as you are yourself.”

  “Very well. I am contrite.”

  He did not look or sound contrite. I turned back to the bundles of papers. “Shall we look at these letters?” I picked up the nearest yellowing envelope, postmarked August 1887. The address read, Miss A. E. McAllister, Auchinleck Cottage, Drumwithie, Lothian. I drew out the letter and unfolded it. It was from Lucy McAllister to her elder sister, written a few months before she went missing.

  Jamie moved close to my shoulder. I held the page where he could see it, and we read the letter through. The words were so simple, and the sentiments so heartfelt, it was as if the sixteen-year-old writer were standing there beside us.

  London, Saturday, 5 o’clock

  Dear Anne,

  We are leaving shortly for the station. Indeed, unless I catch the quarter past five post, we may reach Drumwithie before this letter does. The enterprise has been a failure. I am depressed beyond description, but Mother insists it is merely a setback and I will get to Paris yet. Look for us tomorrow evening after eight o’clock, and have the kettle on for tea.

  With affection,

  Lucy

  P.S. If any letters have come for me while we were away, I hope you have put them under my mattress, as we arranged. If not, I implore you, do it now!

  Jamie and I looked at each other. “So-o-o,” he said, frowning, “my mother knew her sister was corresponding with someone in secret. It looks as if your theory is not so far-fetched after all.”

  I was only half-listening. I had put Lucy’s letter down and was already searching through the papers for the remaining letters. “Look!” I held one up in triumph. “From Paris!” I scrutinized the envelope. “Actually, the letter is to her, not from her.” I drew the letter out. “It is from a man, someone called…” – I turned to the last page – “Matthieu. Do you read French well enough to understand it? I am sure I do not.”

  “I am very rusty,” admitted Jamie. “Maybe there are other letters, in English.”

  We began to sort through and open envelopes. There were three letters from Matthieu, all of them in French. Jamie fetched his French dictionary. Luckily the other two letters were much shorter than the first one we had opened. By the time the clock struck twelve, we had deciphered enough to know that Matthieu was a young man living in his parents’ house in Paris, stifled by bourgeois society and longing for his only love, Lucy. It was not clear how they had met. A great many artists were mentioned in his long letter; he had been to an exhibition which had fired him with enthusiasm, and looked forward to the time when he could set up his own studio and pursue the life of an artist himself. His parents wanted him to study engineering, the thought of which made him distraught.

  “How history repeats itself!” said Jamie wistfully as he folded up the letters and returned them to their envelopes. “I wonder what happened to poor Matthieu. He must be forty or more by now.”

  My father’s life had lasted o
nly forty years. “I hope he is alive,” I reflected. “Anyway, it looks as if Lucy might have wanted to study Art in Paris and be with her Matthieu. What could the failed enterprise in London be, I wonder?”

  Jamie sat down in his fireside chair and rested his cheek on his hand. He looked tired, but his eyes also showed bewilderment. The contents of the box had disturbed him profoundly.

  “I cannot think,” he admitted. “I am weary of this, Cat. My brain is going round and round.”

  I picked up the next bundle, which was another collection of newspaper cuttings. “I am weary too. But I am determined to find out more.”

  My determination was born of two things: relief that the box did not contain anything about my father, and an overwhelming feeling of affinity with Lucy. The very first time her spirit had visited me, I had felt that although she had no voice she was speaking to me, and me alone. She was my age, she was dark-haired like me. She almost was me, but a version of me that inhabited a netherworld I could not cross into until my time came. I needed, for the sake of my own peace, to find out why she had appeared – dirty, ragged, beseeching me to help her – in my bedroom, and only to me.

  I knelt down on the hearthrug. “How did she die, I wonder? And more to the point, if she had run away, perhaps as far as Paris, how did she come to die in the tower room here at Drumwithie?”

  Somewhere downstairs, a door slammed. With a glance at the clock Jamie gave me back the letter. “Grandmother is coming for luncheon today.” His tone was resigned. “That is probably Bridie bustling about, though she does not usually slam doors. I hope she and MacGregor have not had a disagreement. He can be quite—”

  His words were obliterated by heavy footsteps in the corridor and the door burst open. Doctor Hamish stood there, still in his riding coat, his face reddened with exertion. “Jamie, thank God you’re here!”

  In three strides, taking no notice of me, and seeming not to see the letters and photographs spread on the table, the doctor crossed the room to where his son sat. He looked troubled, his eyes almost wild. “We must go to the hospital immediately. Make haste.”

  Jamie had sprung up. “Has something happened to Mother?”

  “I am afraid so. Doctor Galway telephoned me at the surgery. Grandmother is waiting downstairs. Come along.”

  “May Cat come too?” asked Jamie, throwing me a panicked look as he seized his cap and scarf.

  I had risen from the rug and stood before the fireplace. Doctor Hamish’s gaze found me. He looked bewildered, as if he were surprised to see me there. Then he collected himself. “It is family business,” he said briskly.

  “But Cat is family!” protested Jamie.

  “Nevertheless, she may not come.”

  “I do not wish to,” I put in, hoping to calm both of them. “I have some tidying to do here, and then I will wait downstairs for news.”

  “Very well, my dear,” said the doctor distractedly.

  “Shall Bridie wait luncheon?” I asked stupidly as they hurried from the room.

  “No,” said Doctor Hamish without pausing. “Tell her we shall be out all day.”

  When they had gone I looked again at Lucy’s photograph. I studied her eyes, wondering what emotions were playing behind them on that day when she had posed in the photographer’s studio, her best dress arranged around her ankles and her hat tipped forward becomingly. Did she dream of her Frenchman? What had happened to him, and to her? And in what circumstances, young as she was, had she died?

  I put the photograph with the other papers. Then, as good as my word, I tidied them away at the back of a drawer in Jamie’s desk and went to tell Bridie about luncheon.

  They did not return that day. At half past one Bridie, doing her best to remain cheerful, served me a solitary meal of soup and cold chicken. I could not finish it. Towards evening, a boy on a bicycle brought a telegram. Bridie passed it to me silently as she shut the front door. MacGregor had come in. They stood expectantly as I opened it.

  I had never received a telegram before. I felt as if I were an actress, alone on stage at some crucial place in the play. I could not look at my audience. I read the message; it contained the bad news I had feared. “I am very sorry, but Mrs Buchanan has passed away,” I told them. “The doctor says they are putting up at the Caledonian Hotel tonight. They will be home tomorrow on the eleven o’clock train.”

  MacGregor seemed dissatisfied. He stepped forward and for a moment I thought he was going to pluck the telegram from my hand to read for himself. He did not, but he looked at me accusingly. “No mention of how Mrs Buchanan passed away, then? Or when?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. It just says, Bereaved. Caledonian Hotel tonight. Home tomorrow 11 a.m. train.” Telegrams, as my mother often observed, were cryptic enough to be almost ill-mannered. But Drumwithie had no telephone. When Doctor Hamish was needed out of surgery hours, the villagers summoned him the old-fashioned way, by riding up to the castle on a horse or a bicycle, or driving in a trap. “No doubt,” I suggested, my voice shaking a little, “the doctor wishes to tell us in person what happened.”

  Bridie began to cry. She did not, as maids are popularly supposed to do, put her apron to her eyes and run out of the room. She stood there in the dimly lit hallway, sniffing and snorting, her pinky-gold face crumpling as we watched. “She’ll be at peace!” she sobbed. “She’ll be at peace at last!”

  Her distress was as uninhibited as that of a child, and just as if she had been a child, I felt no awkwardness when I put my arms around her shoulders. The social chasm between the middle-aged woman and the young girl, the servant and the lady, vanished. Shorter in stature than I was, she leaned her head into my neck, wetting it with her tears.

  I understood Bridie’s spectacular grief. She had worked for Hamish and Anne Buchanan for a long time, probably since they married. She loved her mistress as she loved Jamie. She had watched the young Anne become ill; she had been present on, as Jamie had described it, the worst Wednesday of their lives. She had taken over the care of Jamie when his mother had eventually gone to the hospital. Had she visited her mistress there, I wondered, whether alone or with the boy?

  I wished I could open the door to the past and witness what Bridie, and no doubt MacGregor too, had endured. I wished I could be of help to them. But they were unaware that Jamie had told me about his mother’s illness at all.

  “Yes, it is all over now,” I assured Bridie. “She is not suffering any more.”

  Bridie made no reply. Her sobbing had lessened, but I could still feel her shoulders trembling. When she drew back from my embrace, I proffered my handkerchief. She took it and blew her nose.

  “You must go to your room now and rest,” I told her.

  “Aye, miss.”

  Bridie was leaning against the door jamb, the handkerchief at her eyes. MacGregor stood silently by, as if awaiting instructions. Suddenly I understood that in the absence of everyone else, I had been thrust into the role of mistress of Drumwithie for this one strange evening. Daunted, but unwilling to let the gillie see it, I nodded briskly. “We must all pass this evening as best we can, MacGregor, and see what the morning brings,” I told him. “Lock up as usual, and please would you meet the eleven o’clock train tomorrow.”

  He gave a small bow. His eyes, I noticed, were misted. Perhaps he would go into the boot room and weep for Anne Buchanan too.

  With that we parted. I took the telegram to the tower room and reread it. The stark words gave no clue as to the nature of Jamie’s mother’s death. All we knew was that Anne, while still a young woman like her sister before her, had quitted the world and left those who loved her bereaved.

  I sat down at the table, my body limp with a surge of grief. Not only for Anne herself, but for Doctor Hamish, for Jamie and, above all, for Mrs McAllister. She had lost her younger daughter when Lucy had barely reached adulthood. And now, in this latest unhappy turn of fate, her elder daughter had gone too, after years of harrowing illness and an attempted suicide.
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  I frowned, thinking hard. It was well documented that those who attempted suicide once often attempted it again. That was why mentally unstable patients were placed in special hospitals, such as the one Anne was in, where they could be kept safe. But supposing – oh, dear God! – supposing the hospital had failed to protect Anne from self-destruction?

  Very agitated, I stood up and opened the tower-room door. It was not yet dark outside, though the clouds were low. The castle suddenly seemed a prison, full of oppressed souls. I hurried down the stairs and across the flagstones, out of the main door and over the bridge. The twilit air was humid; the threat of rain had not yet passed. The dark green of the trees was an irregular scar on the glenside, mingling in my mind the beauty of Drumwithie with the disquieting memory of the pine tree which had shown the way to the cave, and the identity of my ghostly visitor.

  I began to run. My whole being tingled with the desire to move, as quickly as possible, in any direction. No thoughts formed. It was as if my bones, muscles, blood and brain wished to exhaust themselves without my permission; I wanted to run and run until I collapsed.

  But I had not the strength. Before I had gone more than a few yards beyond the garden, I fell to my knees among the broom bushes and covered my face with my hands, filled with despair. Shock rushed in upon me like a hurricane. I could not stop myself trembling, but I could not cry. I knelt there, rocking on my heels, powerless against dark thoughts.

  Jamie, beloved of so many people, standing bereft of his adored mother at the very doorstep of his life.

  Jamie, my love, yet perhaps never my love.

  I took my hands away from my eyes. The gloaming fell fast, but the landscape around me had not yet darkened completely. In the castle windows, a few lights burned, in Bridie’s room, and the hall, and the upstairs landing. The kitchen and boot-room windows were dark; MacGregor must have gone to the tavern in Drumwithie. I did not blame him. I wished for oblivion myself. Slowly, I got to my feet.