by Rayne, Sarah
The view from her flat’s windows changed all the time. Tonight there was a faint mist rising from the river; it was not as thick as the mists that used to lie over Moil Moor when she was a child, but it was sufficient to stir the surface of her memory slightly. Shona could remember how she used to kneel on the windowseat in her bedroom watching the mists form, seeing ghost-figures inside them, frightened something was creeping towards the house… You were always frightened that it was me, weren’t you? whispered Anna’s voice. You thought I was stealing through the mists towards you…
It was extraordinary how clear Anna’s voice still was at times, even after so many years. Shona frowned, closed the curtains on the Thames and its troublesome mistiness, and went into the bedroom to change out of her suit. It was an expensive suit, a sharp charcoal grey with a narrow skirt, and she had worn a fuchsia-coloured silk shirt under it. She had only left two buttons of the shirt unfastened for the office because at the moment there was no one there worth seducing, but she had unfastened an extra one for the doe-eyed researcher. It was a great pity the unfastening of this third button had been a waste of time and it was also a pity Shona had put on her new ivory silk underwear that morning. Grandfather, had he ever seen the ivory silk, would probably have condemned it as harlot’s wear, and Mother and Cousin Elspeth, if told how much it had cost, would have been shocked to their toes and called it a wicked waste of money, quite apart from Shona catching her death of cold in such flimsy things. But they would have approved of it being put carefully away in the wardrobe, because they would not have thought it right to sit around the flat in office clothes. Shona did not think it right, either; it was one of the very few Grith House tenets that had stayed with her. She was not going out this evening so she pulled on jeans and a loose sweater.
Jeans had never been remotely considered as suitable garments at Grith House and would not have been tolerated. Edna and Mona Cheesewright on their twice weekly visits to Grith wore print overalls, and Mona sometimes wound a woollen scarf round her neck because Grith was a right old shocker for draughts and if she got a stiff neck it ran all down her arms. Shona, entering her teens, had pleaded to wear jeans and trainers like everyone else but was not allowed. She had to wear her school uniform during the week, jumpers and skirts at weekends and her afternoon dress on Sundays with her good coat over it for church. Looking back, she often thought it was as if Grith had got stuck around 1940, and never quite caught up with the modern age. Even in the relaxed late-1970s her mother still followed the practise of wearing second or third best in the mornings, with an afternoon dress for when lunch was over.
Mother had been wearing one of her afternoon dresses the day the water main burst somewhere in the valley, and men from the Water Board came out to Grith House because of it. Shona had not really understood what it was all about, but she had pretended to know because of being thirteen, which was practically grown up.
The Water Board men said the problem was caused by all the heavy rain after the long dry summer, and they would need to get to the mains water pipe. The man who had introduced himself as the foreman asked if there was a Mr Seymour and indicated he preferred to have a man to deal with. Mother said, with a tight-lipped expression, that there was no Mr Seymour; there had been a Mr Ross, who was her father, but he had died quite recently. Elspeth chimed in, saying they knew all about Grith House and could answer any questions about its structure perfectly well.
‘What we need is to get to the mains pipe,’ said the foreman again. ‘They’ll likely be in the cellar—’
Mother bleated something about the cellar always being locked on account of it being dangerous and no one ever going down there, and Shona saw her eyes go nervously to the screen halfway across the door in the corner of the hall. The foreman saw it as well and said, ‘Is the cellar entrance over there? Yes, I see it is. Just behind the old screen. We can easily move that to one side. And if you’d kindly get the key, Mrs Seymour.’
Elspeth was saying something about a lot of upheaval, and Mother made ineffectual little darting movements at the men, trying to stop them moving the screen, making stupid excuses about not expecting this, no warning and everywhere in such a mess, oh dear me.
‘We’ll put everything to rights afterwards,’ said the foreman firmly. ‘But it won’t do to let all that pumping water flood the whole of Moil. More than our jobs are worth.’
Shona thought he sounded a bit sarcastic when he said that about putting everything to rights, which was understandable; you could not say Grith was a palace, what with the sooty rooms and leaky gutters and the draughts whistling in under the rattly doors.
‘I’m not at all sure I know where the key is after all these years,’ said her mother, to which the foreman said that was unfortunate, because it meant they would have to smash the lock to get down there.
They were polite but unstoppable and in the end the key had to be fetched and the door had to be unlocked. Mother was quite a long time getting the key, when she came back there was a faint smell of whisky. Shona was sent into the dining room, because surely there was homework for her to be getting on with—or something for her to be getting on with? She went obediently, but she could smell the Moil Moor odour coming up from the cellar already. Like bad drains on a hot day. She left the dining-room door partly open so she could watch and hear everything. The Water Board officials clattered down the stone steps with Shona’s mother following, while Cousin Elspeth went mutteringly away to get buckets and mops and cloths because you could not trust men not to make a mess.
Shona waited until Elspeth, carrying a pail of hot soapy water and hung about with brooms and cloths, had gone down the steps as well, then she came out of the dining room, hoping that if she was very quiet and careful no one would notice her. As she stepped warily through the cellar door the nightmare stirred faintly and there was the warning lurch of sickness at the pit of her stomach. But she went on because this might be the only chance she would ever get to find out what was behind that wall.
Silly! said Anna’s voice in her head. You already know what’s behind the wall. You’ve known for four years. I told you I was getting nearer, said Anna.
Shona hated the way Anna tried to grab her attention when something interesting was happening. She ignored her and edged down the first two steps, ready to scoot back into the dining room if anyone saw her. Her heart was thudding but she went down a third step and then a fourth until she could see all the way into the brick-lined cellar. There were the Water Board men rigging up lights; they had tried running an extension lead up to the hall, but Grith’s wiring was so old that none of the plugs had fitted the extension, so Cousin Elspeth had looked out the storm lanterns they used in power cuts. The men had large torches as well, and they were setting out bags of tools and a dustsheet and they were exclaiming over little puddles of water on the ground. Shona could see the water that had seeped out from behind the wall: it gleamed slimily in the light and it looked like black blood.
But there was no blood that night. Don’t you remember, Shona, that there was no blood?
Shona’s mind began to fill with the familiar fear. For a moment she could hear the mortar being slapped into place, just as it was in the nightmare, and she could smell the wet cement and the old bricks that had been taken from the ruined wall in Grith’s gardens… And then she thought: how do I know that about that old wall being used?
Because you saw it happen, said Anna’s voice. You saw them carry the bricks down here and build the wall. The bricks came from the old garden wall—they didn’t dare draw attention to themselves by ordering anything from a builder’s yard.
The ruined garden wall had been all that was left of a much older house that had stood here a long time ago. When Shona was very small and guests still used to come to Grith, some of them had sketched the wall or painted it in watercolours. Ivy grew over parts of it and people said it was picturesque and Gothic, and how nice to see these fragments of the past. Shona realized she cou
ld remember the wall being there but not when or why it vanished.
In the underground room, the foreman was being stern about the trickling water. ‘See that, Mrs Seymour? That’ll be where the problem is. Straight on the other side of this wall. That’s where your pipes are. Mains water, and sewage and waste alongside, very likely. Not a good arrangement, but I daresay it’s been like that for a long while.’
‘I suppose it must have been. You aren’t going to knock out the wall, surely?’
The foreman said he was very sorry, but that was just what they were going to do.
‘Oh no,’ said Mother at once. ‘No, I can’t possibly give permission for that,’ and Elspeth planted herself in front of the wall and said doughtily that it was a sad day if two unprotected females had to stand by and allow men to damage their home.
‘I’m afraid this is an emergency situation,’ said the foreman kindly but firmly. ‘It gives us powers to go wherever necessary. We don’t need anyone’s permission. Maybe it’d be best if you went back upstairs, Mrs Seymour. And Miss Ross as well. No? Then stand aside now…’
They had sledgehammers and mallets, and the sledgehammers, plied with energy, fell bruisingly on the bricks. Showers of gritty-looking dust came down, but although the wall shivered it remained stubbornly in place. ‘Again,’ said the foreman, and the hammers struck the wall again. Old, bad-smelling brick dust began to cloud the cellar, and the pounding of the sledgehammers began to resonate inside Shona’s head like a drumbeat. Or was it a frightened heart, beating in panic?
The bricks were falling away, breaking up as they hit the ground, and with them came the bad-drains smell again, but much more strongly. The lantern light flickered and as the workmen moved back and forth they cast misshapen shadows on the walls, exactly like the figures in the nightmare. The nightmare was coming closer…
Then one of the men said, ‘Here we go—stand well clear, everyone.’ He swung the sledgehammer one last time and, with a tumbling crash, a large section of the bricks fell away leaving a black jagged-edged hole.
Mother and Elspeth were gasping and coughing and backing away from the wall, and for a moment Shona was afraid they would come up the stone steps into the cleaner air and catch her, but they did not.
When the dust had cleared a bit the foreman picked up one of the lanterns, and Shona felt sick and dizzy because the nightmare was wide open and after all these years she was going to see straight down into its black core.
The hole they had knocked out was at waist height and beyond the wall was a tiny space, not much larger than a cupboard. It looked as if it had been part of the much earlier house that had stood here in days when a secret cubbyhole might be a necessity of life. People living here might secretly have been on the side of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses which they had learned about in school—red roses for Lancaster and white for York—and they might have hidden soldiers. But Shona did not think you could have got more than a couple of people in there together and even then it would have been a squeeze.
The light showed a network of pipes, massive things, like the thick bodies of coiled serpents or giant black worms tangled together… But there was something else in there that the lantern’s light picked up: something that had been standing behind the wall and something that was still standing there, staring out at the occupants of the room, even though it must have been blind for a very long time…
Shona began to tremble. The thing in the wall still had the remains of dry dusty hair and there was skin over the face, although the lips were pulled back from the teeth.
The foreman said in a strange voice, ‘Oh Jesus,’ and snatched up the nearest mallet, frenziedly knocking out more bricks, while the other two men scrabbled at the remaining ones with their bare hands. When the rest of the bricks finally came away, the thing toppled forward, and fell in a hunched-up heap on the dustsheet as if grateful to lie down after such a long time. The bones were held together by the shrivelled leathery skin and it was possible to see the remains of what looked like a suede jacket.
‘Oh Jesus,’ said the foreman again, staring down at the terrible thing. ‘It’s a— Oh God help us, it’s a dead body. Years it must have been there—bloody years. What do we do? Get a doctor or the police? Somebody better phone them. For Christ’s sake, who’s that screaming?’
Shona could hear the screaming as well and it must be coming from someone standing very close to her, because it felt as if it was inside her head. She clapped her hands over her ears to try to shut it out but it went on and on. Inside it was a dreadful voice saying that this was the old nightmare, only this was real, it was real … Mother and Grandfather really had walled up a woman that night and the woman had been there all these years…
Elspeth, silly old Elspeth with her large face frowning, was clumping up the steps and grasping Shona by the arms, and Shona no longer cared about being caught because the nightmare had come true and nightmares were not supposed to do that, and she was more terrified than she could ever remember being in her whole life.
The workman said, ‘For pity’s sake get the lass out,’ and Shona was aware of being half carried across the hall and up the stairs to her bed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE MOIL POLICE DID not immediately take away the thing that had stood behind the wall in Grith House. They took photographs of it and scrapings of the bricks and the earth floor, and only when they had done all that did a police ambulance come to remove the body. The cellar was sealed up for several days so no one could go down there while all the tests were being made and the dead woman’s identity was being established. Mother and Elspeth were asked lots of questions. No one asked Shona any questions, and her mother took two extra nips of whisky each night and said they would not discuss it; it was all too upsetting.
The policemen came back after a while, and said the body was that of Margaret Seymour’s younger sister. There was no doubt whatsoever, said the inspector in charge of the case. They had checked dental records and they were very sure.
Mother said quickly, ‘Oh, but it can’t be. My sister left here a long time ago. Four years it would be. She went to London—she was always one for the bright lights and Moil was too quiet for her. She was a good deal younger than me, of course. Ten years, in fact. We never had much in common, and after she left we lost touch.’ She dabbed her eyes, and Shona, listening unnoticed, thought: but you and Grandfather put her behind the wall. I saw you do it. I thought it was a bad dream, but it wasn’t, it was real.
The two Cheesewrights, also questioned, confirmed that everyone believed Miss Ross had left Moil four years ago, or it might be nearer five. Edna had always thought her bound for a bad end, in fact. Swinging London, said Edna, as one referring to an incomprehensible and somewhat alien world. Hippies and discos and trying to see how many people could be crammed into a telephone box, put in Mona. They knew all about it; they read the newspaper articles. They were not in the least surprised that old Mr Ross’s younger daughter had ended up behind a wall; there would be a man in it somewhere, they said, mark their words.
Questioned about this, Mother said, well, yes, her younger sister had had a lot of friends, but she and her father had not known many of them.
Men? Boyfriends?
‘Oh yes, I’m sure she had boyfriends,’ said Mother. ‘Not here, though. Not in Moil. It’s such a very small place, you see. But she had friends in York and in London. She spent a lot of time in London. There were several people she stayed with, but I don’t think I’d have any names or phone numbers. Not after all this time. I’m not sure I ever had them, in fact; they were so much younger, you see.’
‘Why do you think your sister went to London?’ said the inspector. ‘Was there a letter—a phone call?’
‘There was a row,’ said mother, speaking slowly, as if, thought Shona, she was testing each thing in her mind before saying it. ‘A row with my father—he was a bit old-fashioned in outlook. He didn’t always approve of the way my sister behaved
and lived.’
‘A row about anything specific? About a particular man?’
‘I don’t think so. Just over her staying out late or being extravagant. She’d treat Grith as an hotel, coming and going with no warning, no consideration for others. She had her own bit of money—our mother died in a car crash when we were quite young, and her money was invested in a trust fund for us. Not a fortune, but it meant my sister didn’t need a regular salary in the conventional sense. She did a bit of modelling—clothes and underwear—for a few of the smaller magazines. And demonstrations for cosmetics in the big stores sometimes. That kind of thing.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said the inspector thoughtfully, and Shona saw he was forming a picture of a butterfly—a frivolous extravagant young woman who flitted between Moil and London, mingling with people on the fringes of modelling and magazines, and possibly encountering all kinds of odd characters as a result.
The cause of death had not yet been discovered, although, as the inspector said, it was a fairly safe assumption that the poor girl had been murdered—why else would the body be so carefully hidden? There were a few tests that could help establish how Anna Ross had died, he said, but there was only so far they could go with that: they were not magicians. There were no fractures to the skull or to any bones so they were testing for poison, but after four years there were only so many tests that could be made. The problem was that there was no ‘overall’ test they could make—you had to know which poison you were looking for. For instance, if you tested for strychnine, that would tell you if strychnine was present or not, but it would not tell you if any other poison was present. Arsenic, say, or morphine. And four years was a long time for most poisons to remain detectable anyway.
