Walls of Silence: a stunning historical thriller you won't be able to put down

by Ruth Wade

‘Outside my cottage in Fletching.’

  ‘Can you remember what had happened to you just before the encounter?’

  ‘I’d been to the doctor to check I wasn’t going mad like my father. He pronounced I wasn’t but then spoiled the relief by coming up with one of those facile diagnoses that you medical men have at your fingertips.’

  ‘Ah, yes, sorry about that. It’s a disease of the profession brought about by our inability to leave a vacuum of knowledge unfilled. What did he say?’

  He saw her eyelids flicker and realised, with a start, she thought he’d transgressed into forbidden territory.

  ‘I don’t mean Edward. The doctor. Can you recall coming away from the consultation feeling upset?’

  ‘Anybody would. He told me that my memory lapses and insomnia boiled down to under-stimulation. That I was suffering from common-or-garden loneliness. The patronising bastard.’

  Stephen’s pencil skidded over the page. He couldn’t remember ever having heard her use language that wasn’t precise and proper. She must’ve felt extremely provoked and angry. Already the patterns were fitting his hypothesis perfectly.

  ‘Was it pleasant to be with Edward again?’

  ‘Very. We had tea.’

  ‘Who did most of the talking?’

  ‘He did. We had a lot to catch up on.’

  ‘I suspect you steered the conversation though. So what did you ask him?’

  ‘Where he’d been, why he’d come back ... if he was married.’

  He caught the hint of a flush on her cheeks.

  ‘Think very carefully about this one: did he ever volunteer any information – and you don’t have to tell me what it was – that wasn’t in response to some prompt from you?’

  ‘I know what you’re getting at. But he wasn’t a figment of my imagination; he was there – I could see him, touch him, smell his pipe tobacco.’

  ‘Except those things aren’t in conflict, Edith. Our minds control our senses by filtering what we acknowledge or ignore. I’d like to try a little experiment to demonstrate the truth of this: What can you feel under your fingertips right at this moment?’

  ‘The armchair.’

  ‘Okay. Without moving your hand and resting just as lightly, concentrate on the pressure of your skin on the cloth. What now?’

  ‘The weave ... a slight greasiness ... a bump under my right thumb where the horsehair stuffing has bunched.’

  ‘Excellent. You see? Those sensations had been available to you the instant you sat down but your brain didn’t regard them worthy of notice until your mind forced it to pay attention. It’s the only way we can cope or our circuits would be permanently overloaded. So sometimes we don’t feel what is there and, equally, sometimes our senses genuinely perceive what isn’t externally present but is a hallucination of the mind. The latter is essentially the trick behind hypnotism: I can get you to relax because the image we conjure up together – my words, your senses – transports you to a less threatening environment.’

  ‘Except the logic breaks down because he said some things I certainly wouldn’t want to make myself hear.’

  ‘No one has ever said the psyche is anything but complex. I’ll admit I’ve been known to fantasise the odd lover’s tiff with the sole aim of experiencing a sweet resolution.’

  Her look of lofty scepticism had been replaced with a smirk. If she was going to goad him again about Helen then so be it; he’d consider it a small price to pay if he’d got his point home. But Edith surprised him by letting it pass; she was probably thinking too much about herself to bite. Stephen pushed up the cuff of his jacket and timed the silence. The hands had ticked away a full two minutes before he heard her clear her throat. Whatever she said next would determine whether he’d made any real progress or if she was just tolerating his explorations.

  ‘So you’re saying I made him up?’

  ‘Not exactly. My contention is that he is a projection. Let me put it this way ... When we go to the cinema the images are there in front of us and if it’s a good story that has some resonance for us then we utterly believe the scenes are being played out before our eyes there and then. But the actors are in Hollywood and not in the picture house. And the characters they’re impersonating don’t exist in any temporal reality but it makes no difference.’

  ‘That willing suspension of disbelief.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Samuel Taylor Coleridge. You really should read more to augment your scientific training, Dr Maynard; you’ll find poets have summed up the human condition in far more imaginative ways than you’ll ever be able to.’

  ‘Touché. But you admit that means I could be on the right lines then?’

  ‘During the picnic, Edward talked for hours about his time in the Bolivian Rain Forests.’

  ‘And I found a heap of National Geographic magazines in your cottage, some with notes marking articles on South American expeditions – in fact I brought them over with me because I thought they must’ve meant something to you. Am I correct in assuming you studied them before you met up with him?’

  ‘He brought things, beer and some rugs.’

  ‘Could you not have taken them along yourself?’

  ‘We swapped memories of the first picnic we had together.’

  ‘Two differencing perspectives from the same mind.’

  ‘He knew people I’d never met.’

  ‘You might have done only to relegate the encounters to your subconscious, or they were products of distant daydreams. Did he ever say he’d met anyone you knew?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘I’m afraid he doesn’t count if, as I believe, your mind constructed Edward as an alternative personality to absorb and deflect paternal rejection.’

  ‘Some of the shell-shocked officers he was treating ...’

  ‘Ditto. Neighbours; anyone in the village; PC Billings? Did you see him conversing with strangers in the street or on the bus? Was there ever another person, even one in your peripheral vision, when you were together?’

  The silence lasted four minutes this time. He was hitting her hard with uncomfortable realities but she was contemplating them. And she hadn’t signalled she no longer wished to participate.

  ‘He tormented me. Issued threats.’ Her voice was tinged with hurt, not irritation at her interrogator.

  ‘Can anything wound or torture us more than our own minds via remembered humiliations, suppressed memories, replays of regrets and recriminations?’

  ‘What you’re saying is that everything I thought he did was really me ... I was the one who ... who ...’

  Edith’s eyes shot open. She wasn’t looking at anything in the room, her unfocused gaze stretching back beyond the reach of his interpretation. For a split second he saw naked terror reflected in them, but then her mind’s protective barriers shuttered down on the source. A blink ... and she was back with him again. Now he’d got her to consider the unsettling truth about Edward, it was vital he reinforce her sense of self with some of the corporeal reality of her past. A woman would probably be less threatening; there was only one he could think of.

  ‘Would you like to have a visitor, Edith? Apart from me, I mean. How would it be if I telephoned the constable in Fletching and see if he can arrange for Old Sophie to come over for luncheon? You could perhaps ask her if she has any old-fashioned remedies to get rid of those moles.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Edith looked confused and he thought maybe she was going to deny any associations from her past. Then she laughed. ‘Oh, the moles; I’d completely forgotten I’d told you about them.’ Her expression changed to one of wariness.

  ‘Will you be joining us to take notes of the experiment?’

  ‘Of course not. But you needn’t fret I’ll be at a loose end because I can occupy myself fulfilling my promise to Peter to help dig over the allotments, and after that I’ll clear all my outstanding debts by going over to fetch your rose book. Shall I get up to the Hal
l now and make that telephone call?’

  Edith didn’t look excited at the prospect, but neither was she objecting to his proposal. Stephen packed his briefcase with a fizzing excitement tickling in his belly. If his intuition was right then the reputed habit Dr Potter had acquired for almost pathologically documenting every thought process might not have been confined to his clinical work and could well have spilled over into his private life. Somewhere within the walls of that cottage in Fletching might lurk written evidence of his dreadful desire to be rid of his child. If so, he could use it to confront Edith’s conscious mind with something more than a repressed memory and thereby force it to begin the process of healing.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The black car looked like a beetle scurrying over the Downland chalk as it crested the rise. He didn’t have long. From his vantage point, he could see both the cottage and the stable block. One would offer sanctuary, the other a reckoning that could end up amounting to the beginning of the end.

  Except when he saw the car draw up to the Hall’s main entrance and the figure in a blue uniform get out, he knew that the death dance had already begun. Hiding would only delay, not prevent, exposure. And running away was the act of a coward. The time before he’d had no choice but to disappear, but now he did. He could end this. Remove the doubt. Take control – of the timescale, if not the outcome. What was left of his freedom could be spent in fear and loathing or climax with a supreme act of self-sacrifice. Martyrdom even.

  Edward shivered before turning back towards his fate.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Stephen jumped off the back of the cart. The journey had been longer – and bumpier – than he had anticipated. He wondered if Edith was having a pleasant time. PC Billings had been remarkably efficient and rung back before suppertime yesterday with the offer of driving the Gypsy over himself in his brother-in-law’s car. His only qualification being that it’d have to be for tea rather than luncheon because of the Lewes Crown Court’s Friday sittings. Which had foiled Stephen’s plan of the luxury of a ride all the way to Fletching, and he’d had to cadge a lift in one of the clothes collection vans, completing the final leg with the Uckfield seed merchant. But he had benefitted by having the perfect excuse to cut short his allotment digging. As it was, he had an aching back – not helped, of course, by being jostled by sacks of grain – and the palms of his hands were criss-crossed with emergent blisters. Physical activity, even when performed in the clean crisp air of a perfect autumnal morning, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  As the policeman had told him it would, the cottage key was hanging on a piece of string inside the letterbox. Stephen was glad he hadn’t had to ask the geese-keeping neighbour for it. Although his visit was far from being clandestine, he hadn’t wanted someone looking over his shoulder to ask awkward questions as to why he was prying into all the places a senile old man might’ve secreted something of an intensely private nature. Not that there was any guarantee that anything of that sort had ever, or still, existed, but he wasn’t going to leave this place until he’d conducted a thorough search PC Billings would’ve been proud of. Except he was never going to know: his may not be the actions of a trespasser but neither did they feel exactly on the right side of the law.

  Someone had been paying attention to keeping the garden in good order but the inside had that mildew odour of closed-up houses. Stephen stepped back over the threshold, shut the front door once more and pocketed the key. A jar of eucalyptus balm was called for to block off his nostrils, and some food wouldn’t go amiss; he didn’t know why he hadn’t asked Helen to pack him something: yes he did, she’d have queried what was going to take him so long he couldn’t stop at a pub catering for the rambling brigade.

  The walk up the lane was delightful. No wonder Dr Potter had chosen to retire here. In the distance, Stephen could hear the cries of seagulls following a plough. He’d been born and brought up a city boy but could see the attraction of living in a place like this – provided he didn’t have to work the land of course. November in the lea of the Downs had none of the bleak dreariness you found in London. The scent of wood fires rather than the acrid stench of coal smoke probably had something to do with it. Although he suspected that, even for him, the romance would vanish once winter began to bite; he wondered if the villagers found themselves completely housebound when it snowed. Stephen’s heart squeezed for Edith trapped indoors with the man who had given her life but, who they both knew on some level or other, had wished it taken away again. It came to him that he’d never got to the bottom of what had compelled Edith to face the truth in the days, hours, or minutes, before her fugue; it hadn’t felt important because his real work had been to erect a platform of reality to keep her from descending back into a catatonic state. It was a frustrating twist that at this moment the only two people who could shed any light on what happened were over at Beddingham Hall.

  A pub was up ahead just beyond the expanse of the common. On the corner opposite sat a forge, the rhythmic ring of a hammer hitting an anvil counterpointing his steps. So far – apart from the thin blue wisps rising from chimneys – he’d almost got the impression the place was deserted. The grocery shop was at the bottom of a hill curving up and away towards a copse of bare-branched trees.

  The bell over the door tinkled. A voice drifted down from somewhere near the ceiling.

  ‘A very good afternoon and what can I be doing you for?’

  Stephen’s eyes took a while to adjust to the gloom but when they did it was as though he’d walked into a theatrical stage-set. He hadn’t known emporiums like this really existed. Anything and everything seemed to be for sale, short of a kitchen sink. He dodged a pile of lethal-looking animal traps seemingly laid there to catch strangers unawares. The grocer descended a ladder on his left, his arms full of boxes of Green’s Egg Custard Mix.

  ‘Never get that shelf stacked if I keep getting interruptions – not that I’m complaining mind, or my till would be empty.’ He clicked his false teeth as he dropped his goods on the counter. ‘Are you seeing what you’re wanting or do you require me to fulfil an order?’

  Stephen guessed the man dreamed of the day someone would answer that they needed the latter. ‘A jar of vapour rub please.’

  ‘No call for stocking that in these parts. Got a touch of the sniffles have you? Mrs Gibson, the butcher’s wife, makes up a powerful tonic I could be selling you a bottle of.’

  The thought of what went into such a concoction wasn’t appealing.

  ‘Some peppermint oil instead perhaps?’

  ‘That I can accommodate. Only you’re missing giving your body a treat by not taking the tonic.’

  Stephen waited until the grocer returned to the counter with a small brown bottle. He pointed to an open zinc tin of loose biscuits. ‘I’ll have a dozen of these, thank you.’ He watched them being counted out. ‘It’s a nice village you have here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be thinking the same when Baker’s Lane is ankle-deep in mud. Take my word for it; you’re seeing us at the fag-end of the year and it don’t get much better after this. But I’ll be giving you it’s a fair-to-middling day.’

  He started to wrap the biscuits into a small parcel, holding the brown paper down with his stumps while reaching with the other hand for the string. Stephen breathed in the scents of cloves and washing soap and wondered what Edith had made of it all. Would she have found the quaintness amusing after the London department stores, or would she have discovered that traditional values often went hand in hand with old-fashioned small-mindedness?

  ‘Anything else I can be helping you with?’

  ‘A piece of strong cheddar and a small loaf.’

  ‘Have to be getting along to Crowhurst’s bakery if it’s bread you’re wanting. Only I reckon he won’t have much left at this time of day – never been one to slave over a hot oven when it’s destined for the ducks, is our Sneezer. Box of crackers do you?’

  The anticipation of a freshly-baked
cob had begun to make Stephen’s mouth water but he thought it probably better to make all his purchases in one place if he was to avoid drawing too much attention to himself; he didn’t relish any inquisitive knocks on the door of Edith’s cottage.

  ‘That’ll be fine. A bottle of lemonade as well.’

  He leafed idly through a stack of magazines on the end of the counter as the grocer shuffled about getting everything together. He was back to catch Stephen thumbing an edition of National Geographic.

  ‘That kind of thing to your liking is it? If so may I take the liberty of recommending the December ’26? Plenty of fuzzy-wuzzies not wearing very much in that one ... if you get my drift.’

  Stephen couldn’t stop a blush from searing his cheeks. What an odious little man to reduce cultural exploration to cheap titillation. Poor Edith must’ve had to endure a fair degree of sniggering if she’d had to pick up her subscription from here rather than having it delivered by the postman. Except, Stephen suspected, even then her elevated interests would still have been gossiped about.

  ‘Got a lot of them, I have,’ the grocer called out from behind his cheese cutter, ‘all out of date, but that hardly matters none. Constable Billings took it into his head to be telling the post office that her as ordered them was wanting them cancelled, but not before there was all those you see there sitting on her mat. He thought rather than them go to waste I might get a few pennies for the pictures.’

  Stephen threw himself into the opening. ‘Not Edith Potter by any chance? I knew a little of her father, and met her once or twice.’

  ‘The very same. Strange bird she was, shut up in the loony bin now. Lucky thing she never got hitched.’

  He returned to the counter and started folding a sheet of greaseproof around the cheese.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Because what with the old man being daft as a brush and her soft in the noggin, she’d have raised bigger village idiots than we has already.’

  Stephen picked up his purchases and tossed a half-a-crown on the counter. Why was it that people had to be so bloody spitefully condemning of the unfortunate? He’d like to arrange for the residents of Beddingham Hall to descend on this place and let them see for themselves why they were better off out of so-called decent society.