He didn’t rise when she came into the room. He could have, if he’d cared to; the whiskey bottle at his elbow was almost empty, and his face was redder than the fire accounted for, but his eyes still focused sharply on her, and his voice wasn’t slurred—wasn’t even stiff in the way of a less practiced drunk attempting to hide his condition.
“So you charmed them again, did you, darling?”
She forced herself to answer as though she’d heard only his words, not his mocking tone. “The music did,” she said. “Lady Verne is very fond of Shakespeare, you know; his songs as well as his plays.” She bit her lip. That had been clumsy—it was one of the things that mattered to him, that he knew the ways of the highborn when she was clueless. “And her friend there, Doreen... I only learned afterward that she had just lost her daughter; she was most moved by ‘Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun...’”
“And the gentlemen,” he said, with an inflection that made the noun an insult, “were most... moved... by your other... ah.... charms, such as they are. Made some appointments to meet you after, maybe?”
“Don’t be absurd! If you troubled to come yourself you’d see...”
“Oh yes, if I came they could all look at you shrinking away from me, and they’d feel like knights in shining armor coming to rescue you. You’d like that, no doubt.”
She knew how little good it would do to say that she’d only started shrinking from him after he started hitting her. At least he didn’t hit her where the bruises would show; not yet; he’d taken love and home and safety from her, but not her good name or her music. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if she could only be careful enough... “Let’s not quarrel,” she said. “You must be tired. I know I am. Good night.”
“Choirs of angels sing thee to thy rest,” he answered in a cold voice that didn’t suit the words.
“It’s flights of angels,” she said shortly, hurrying upstairs, singing under her breath because while she was singing she wasn’t crying and he hated it when she cried.
At the top of the stairs she realized what she was singing, and wished she had stayed silent.
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot on sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never...”
She thought of stopping. But that would show that she thought it might sound personal, and Geoffrey would take that as an insult too. She kept singing, more softly, as she went into her room, as she stared out over the frozen fields at the full moon.
“Then sigh not so, but let them go, and be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your songs of woe into Hey, nonny, nonny...”
She was singing too slowly; it sounded like a dirge. And she wasn’t singing loudly enough to cover the sound of his feet coming up the stairs. Let him go into his room, let him leave her alone...
Her door was opening. She would not turn. She would not look at him. She kept her eyes fixed on the moon.
“Sing no more ditties,” she sang, feeling her breath catch in her throat as Geoffrey leaned in behind her. “Sing no more...” The notes trailed off into a short ugly cry of fear as he reached over her head and she saw the belt stretched tight between his hands.
The belt clamped round her throat, taking away the music and the moon, throwing her down into the echoing dark.
Chapter One The Rain It Raineth Everyday
Present day: Carlisle, England
Ida Ellis thrust what she hoped was a generous tip (she really had to learn British money better) into the cabbie’s hand and ran for the house. The weather gave her an excuse—it wasn’t raining hard, but it was January and too chilly to stroll around getting soaked. She jammed the key into the lock, kicked the lower right corner and put her knee to the middle of the door as she’d been instructed. The key still wouldn’t turn. Now for heaven’s sake let nobody come by and think she was trying to break into the house...
When the door swung out she almost overbalanced with it. She sprang back, thinking Burglars, feeling her throat constricting. Burglars in England! It’s not fair...
“Miss Ellis?” a woman’s voice said. “Come in and get dried off, do.” The woman herself leaned out of the door and smiled. She didn’t look like a burglar—not that Ida really knew what they ought to look like; with her short gray-rooted hair, her sensible glasses and little earrings, she looked more like a church lady. Ida blinked at her and came in to blessedly warm dry air. “I...This is Hillcrest House?”
“Of course. Did Mrs. Finch not tell you, then? She asked me to have it warm and aired out for you. I’m Annie Tretheway, I live just down the road.”
“I’m sorry,” Ida said, meaning it. “She did say that. I...I didn’t...” Don’t babble, she told herself sternly. Then, with greater alarm, And don’t cry!
“You’re all in, aren’t you?’ Annie said. “The jet lag’s terrible. The first time I flew to New York I burst into tears when the cabbie asked me where I wanted to go. Well, I won’t get underfoot now. I turned the heat up two hours ago, and there are fires in the kitchen and the drawing room. Takes the damp off better. The loo’s that way, your bedroom’s right up the stairs there, kitchen in there—the kettle’s turned down. On the gas stove, of course. Tea’s out on the table, and a bit of something stronger if you want it. I’ve left the key I had from Mrs. Finch on the kitchen table. See you later, then.” As she spoke she slipped on a raincoat.
“Thank you, Mrs. Tretheway, you’ve been very kind,” Ida said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Sorry to gape at you like an idiot, I just...”
“Don’t fret, dear,” Mrs. Tretheway said, shutting the door behind her.
Annie sat down in the kitchen, by a fire that she would have been grateful for if she hadn’t felt so embarrassed. So she’d met the first of neighbors, and a fine impression she’d made. What a fool she’d been to think that running away across the ocean would get her away from the fear.
It wasn’t as though she had anything to be afraid of. That was the humiliating part. Simply, whenever she walked across a room, or even a subway platform, she felt as though she was staggering around under a spotlight and people were pointing and laughing, and when she spoke her voice sounded strained and her words stupid, and there was usually an ugly little voice laughing in the back of her mind. And when she sang...
For a while singing had been the one thing that kept the fear away. She discovered that way out the summer when she was sixteen and pushed herself, as a sort of desperate dare, to act in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Cymbeline. She didn’t mind being assigned to play a boy, Guiderius; what could she have expected, being five foot ten, with no figure, and with a gruff voice lower than that of any other girl in her class?
When it came time to practice the burial song and she started singing, the other actors stopped what they were doing and leaned in toward her. She heard her voice ringing, swinging, gathering light and fullness. She couldn’t imagine being too afraid to breathe. It was the same every time they performed the play.
The magic didn’t end with the play. When she sang old ballads at the farmer’s market, and then at the state fair, and then actually in a concert hall, the music filled her and the fear fell away and the audience leaned in and she was glad.
It was a year ago, maybe, that her voice began to sound thin and flat in her own ears. The fear began before the bad reviews. The fear thinned her voice; worse, it broke the thread that bound her audience to her. She gave out that she had laryngitis and stopped booking appointments.
When Anthea, the last of the Corbett cousins, died and left Hillcrest House to Ida it was a relief. Ida was properly ashamed, of course, to be relieved at anybody’s being dead. But Cousin Anthea was ninety-four, and Ida had met her only once, and while Ida was in England getting used to her new property nobody could expect her to give concerts. Even a sane person would take a break.
“You’ll like it,” Mrs. Finch, Cousin Anthea’s lawyer, had
told her. “It has everything Americans want: grand old fireplaces and central heating and a gas range, modern plumbing and a fine old bathtub, and electricity of course, though there aren’t so very many outlets, and even a ghost.” Ida imagined that the last word came out challengingly. Probably Mrs. Finch thought Americans were—what? Vulgarly curious? Timorous? Psychically insensitive? What reaction was Ida supposed to avoid? “Sounds lovely,” Ida answered warmly, a few seconds too late.
~~~~~
By the time she’d had her tea Ida was quite satisfied with the gas range, the fireplace, the plumbing, and indeed with everything but herself. It doesn’t matter, she told herself. There’s no one here to see you now. The way this house stands off to itself, you can sing or weep or scream and no one will hear.
You can sing. That promise seemed hopeful, after all. Here, with no audience to worry her, to judge her... She threw her head back and launched into a con brio rendition of “Hi, Ho, Nobody Home.”
Her voice was full enough, but what a peculiar echo! Almost a syncopated echo, and the overtones...
Ida stopped mid-line. Froze. The melody she was singing had turned down at the note where she ended, but the echo turned up, into a rising, thinning note...
Somebody was breathing raggedly. Somebody...
Ida was breathing raggedly. You neurotic cowardly idiot, Ida told herself sternly. It’s all in your head. Nevertheless she picked the player out of her bag, put in the most calming thing she had—a CD of Bach chorales—and turned it up.
There was no echo. No echo at all.
Chapter Two Perchance to Dream
Mrs. Tretheway had left enough in the fridge so that Ida could get herself a good supper without having to go out and face the neighbors again. She ate in the kitchen, close to the fire, with Bach still playing at high volume. The warmth and the music backed the fear off enough so she could eat without choking. She washed the dishes—Mrs. Tretheway had turned the hot water heater on too, bless her—and then decided that, though it was only seven o’clock here, it was the middle of the night in New York and there was really nothing wrong with going directly to bed.
She looked at the CD player, and told herself firmly that she didn’t need it upstairs. She wouldn’t sing herself to sleep, perhaps, but she wouldn’t try to drown the noises out either. Her New York house—in farm country in the Hudson Valley, a world away from the city—was old and creaked to itself at night.
That is, it seemed old in the US; Hillcrest House was at least a hundred years older, and that wasn’t so remarkable here in England. But the drafts were like what she knew at home, and probably the night noises would be, too. It would be, in a way, familiar.
And if there is a ghost? she asked herself.
It will be an adventure, she told herself firmly. Like something out of Dickens. Very charming and no harm done. Just the sort of thing to tell my friends back home—
What friends? she countered. And you wouldn’t tell anyone anyway, for fear they’d know you’re going off your head.
She bit her lip and hurried up the stairs. The draft was bad there; she could feel the cold air stirring the hairs on the back of her neck.
The bedroom was better. Much better. Mrs. Tretheway had cranked the heat up, and the red-and-gold quilt on the bed looked warm and inviting. The dresser was a fine old piece, polished with use, and only one of the drawers was stuck shut; the mirror had a few age spots, but it was wide and clean, and reflected the warm room most satisfactorily. It also reflected the picture window. She turned to look out that.
The kitchen windows looked out over the gardens to the street, but this room faced out over the gentle slope of the hill and the open fields. There was already the ghost of a waxing moon climbing the greying sky.
The fear backed away, and exhaustion closed over Ida like a wave. She made herself brush her teeth, pull on her pajamas and turn on her night light before crawling into the bed (there was even a hot-water bottle in at her feet, still warm; she owed an effusive thank-you letter to Mrs. Tretheway, and probably a cake too) and falling heavily asleep.
She stood on stage with the music pouring out of her. “On the banks of red roses my love and I sat down...” The audience leaned in toward her as she sang. Their lips were parted and their eyes shone. What had she ever been afraid of? They would love her again. They did love her again. Especially the golden-haired man in the back with the sea-blue eyes...
The verses rolled on, shifting from love to fear, from fear to murder. The blue-eyed man was in the front row now, leaning in, close. Too close. She looked away from him to her other listeners. Their eyes didn’t shine so much as burn from their pale wavering faces.
“What’s happening?” That was what she meant to ask, but her mouth wouldn’t shape the words. She wasn’t singing now. When had she stopped singing? Her mouth was open but no sound came from it. She tried to reach out for them. She couldn’t.
Of course she couldn’t. She was trapped in the glass, in the mirror, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t sing, she couldn’t breathe...
It’s not real, a desperate voice said in her mind. Ida’s own voice. She’d trained herself, told herself the words to say to break the nightmare every night before going to sleep. It’s not real. You’re dreaming. Wake up.
The words pushed the distorted faces and the hot eyes away. For a moment the blue-eyed man was alone with her. Then she was completely alone in the dark, in the imprisoning glass. She still couldn’t breathe. There was a roaring in her ears, an aching in her lungs. She couldn’t...
She came awake suddenly, heavily, smacking her head on the headboard. She’d been moving, all right, whether she felt it or not. Her feet were icy. Her body was bathed in cold sweat.
No wonder. She’d thrashed enough to push the covers off. They lay humped on the floor, colorless in the night-light’s pale blue glow. The only thing left on top of her was the top sheet, which was rolled up like a rope and laid across her neck.
Chapter Three The Vexed Winds Do Sorely Ruffle
Ida woke again at the first crash. The covers were over her this time, and she was breathing, and she felt more irritated than afraid. “I’m coming! Wait up!” she shouted from under the blanket.
The crash came again, louder. Not from downstairs, after all. Someone was thumping at her bedroom window. She rolled over and looked just in time to see the shutter slam against the window again. It was a mercy nothing had broken yet.
She rolled out of bed, yanked on her quilted bathrobe over her pajamas, thrust the window open and winced at the slap of cold rain on her face. She had to lean out father than she liked to find the twist-latch and wedge the shutter firmly against the wall again. By the time she leaned back in and shut the window her hair was wringing wet and the rest of her wasn’t much better.
No use changing, she decided. There were similar sounds of banging from more than one direction. She dashed out of her bedroom into the...guest bedroom, she guessed, down at the end of the hall. There were two narrow windows there instead of one large one, and one of them also had a shutter loose and swinging. To make matters worse, once she’d leaned out she couldn’t find a latch for it; broken off, maybe. It took her several tries to pull both shutters closed at once and drop the crossbar over them. Once she’d finished she could still hear banging back in the direction she’d come from.
Back down the hall...no, it wasn’t her bedroom this time; it was the one across the hall. She hurried across.
This might have been meant for the master bedroom. It was larger than hers, and had a splendid four-poster bed with an actual canopy. The curtains on the window side of the bed were pulled back, showing a bare mattress.
A bare mattress that was dripping water slowly onto the floor. She frowned. The window nearest the bed was open, letting in the wind and rain. Why hadn’t Mrs. Tretheway noticed that? Well, come to that, why hadn’t Ida noticed? She hurried round the bed, muttering undirected imprecations under her breath.
She
stopped, swung round. For a moment she could have sworn that the curtains twitched—not as if the wind was blowing them, which it was, but as if somebody was standing behind them.
Ida cursed her imagination, turned away from the bed and strode toward the window. At least it started as a stride. It ended as a slip across the puddle on the floor. Ida jerked, tried to stay upright, grabbed at something, anything, to steady herself. What she got was the heavy drape at the side of the window, which was considerably less than no help, as it tore off in her hand and came down on her.
This should have been annoying; in fact it was unnerving, and Ida beat it off as though it had been a living attacker. This impression was only reinforced when something grabbed her wrist. She jerked frantically, and the grip transferred itself to her neck, choking. Ida kicked out behind her, jabbed her elbows and collapsed in a heap on the soggy floor, and lay still long enough to be quite sure that no one else was lying there with her.
She wriggled her right arm experimentally. It was still tangled up in something tougher than the threadbare curtain. In, as she realized a moment later when she’d worked her head loose of the fabric and could see, the cord that held the curtain open. Part of the cord was still looped around her neck, but now that her right hand and a wodge of sodden fabric were caught in the loop too she wasn’t choking.
“No harm done,” she said aloud, prying cord and cloth away and treading gingerly back to close the window. “No harm at all. Just bad weather and a window left open and these stupid drapes... I don’t even like drapes... I’ll have to spread this lot out in front of the fireplace, and the mattress too, but I’m not going to mess with it right now...” She muttered reassuringly to herself as she backed out of the room.
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