Ghost Song

by Rayne, Sarah

  ‘I’m sure he’d let you in. But of course I’ll come with you.’

  It was a leaden November afternoon, and Burbage Street, when they reached it, lay glumly beneath lowering skies. Rain fell incessantly, splashing along the gutters and slopping into the street drains.

  ‘Dreadful weather,’ said Hal, turning up the collar of his coat as he sprang down from the cab and turned to help Flora. His dark hair was misted from the rain; Flora suddenly wanted to reach up to touch it. Instead she concentrated on avoiding the puddles, and said the rain was apparently delaying the work on the theatre.

  ‘It’s something to do with not being able to lay electric wires. They can’t risk touching live cables if they’re wet—I think that’s what they said, anyway.’

  They turned right and then right again into Candle Square with the network of streets leading off it, and found the right house by the simple method of asking a passing postman where Mr Rinaldi lived.

  ‘Number twenty-four,’ said Flora, scanning the houses, which were small and narrow—almost identical to the street where she had spent her own childhood. ‘There it is.’

  ‘A polished brass door knocker and a window-box with late geraniums,’ said Hal approvingly. ‘Very nice. Is there a Mrs Rinaldi?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, we’ll hope he’s at home.’

  Rinaldi was at home and he opened the door to them as soon as they knocked. For a moment he stared at them without speaking. As if he thinks we’re ghosts, thought Flora. But he wasn’t expecting us, of course. Then Rinaldi seemed to recover himself. He said, ‘You’ve heard, haven’t you? That’s why you’re here.’

  He was white-faced and Flora put out a hand to him. ‘Heard what? Rinaldi, what on earth’s wrong?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ he said. ‘No, I can see you don’t. But I’ve only just known myself—they were talking in the Sailor’s Retreat when I went in for my bit of dinner at twelve, and— I’m so sorry, please come inside.’

  He showed them into a small parlour, and sat on the edge of a chair, twisting his hands together. ‘It’s Bob Shilling,’ he said, and Flora felt a thump of apprehension.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He was knocked down by an omnibus,’ said Rinaldi. ‘They took him to All Saints’ Hospital and he was unconscious for the best part of twelve hours. Concussion, they call it.’ He seemed to be speaking more easily now he was launched on his tale. ‘He’ll be all right, although he broke two ribs and an ankle. They say that can be put right.’

  He paused and Flora said sharply, ‘When did it happen?’ She leaned forward, aware that Hal had done the same. ‘Rinaldi, when was this?’

  ‘On Monday night,’ said Rinaldi. ‘The night the Tarleton closed. The night we—the night those black-hearted villains were there. It was just before midnight—outside the Sailor’s Retreat. Shilling was coming out after his supper and it must have been the last omnibus. Mostly they stop running at midnight. He was crossing the road to come back to the theatre to make the midnight round. Only he never did so because of the omnibus. No. And that means,’ he said, speaking rapidly, ‘that no one’s been inside the place for two—almost three days. The workmen were to go in the very next morning, but they didn’t because the weather meant they couldn’t deal with the electric wiring.’

  ‘I heard about that,’ said Flora. She looked at Hal. ‘It’s bound to be all right,’ she said. ‘I mean—about the twins. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure to be,’ said Hal, but Flora heard the uncertain note in his voice. ‘But it was in my mind to make sure—that’s why we’re here now, Rinaldi, to see if you’ll let us in.’

  ‘It was in my mind as well, sir,’ said Rinaldi. ‘It was more than in my mind—I was just putting on my coat to go along to Platt’s Alley when you knocked on the door. I’d be glad of your company.’

  His eyes flickered to Flora and Hal at once said, ‘My dear, you could perhaps stay here, if Rinaldi wouldn’t mind. We shan’t be very long.’

  ‘No, indeed, I wouldn’t mind you staying here—’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ said Flora flatly. ‘And you can argue until hell freezes, I shall still come with you, so we needn’t waste any more time talking about it.’

  Logically, there was no reason why Flora should feel this sense of urgency, and this choking fear, because even without Shilling’s midnight round, Anton and Stefan had only had to go back up the stone steps and out through the self-locking foyer door. They had known all that perfectly clearly. But supposing they had not been able to find the way, or Stefan had been more severely injured than they realized? What if the foyer door mechanism had not worked? Or supposing…

  There aren’t any supposings and what ifs, said Flora silently and firmly. It’ll be all right. But as they turned into Platt’s Alley she caught sight of Hal’s expression and knew he was having the same nightmare images. When Rinaldi unlocked the stage door and they stepped inside, she could feel fear knocking in her mind.

  They waited while Rinaldi collected the lantern from Bob Shilling’s room, then followed him along the passage. There was not very much light from the lantern, but there was enough.

  ‘Is the note still in Shilling’s room? The one Hal left?’

  ‘Yes. And the half-sovereign’s in the envelope,’ said Rinaldi.

  Once in the inner passageway, Rinaldi held the lantern up so that its light fell on the oak door, and with his free hand he reached down to grasp the handle. Flora saw his expression change; she saw him look sharply over his shoulder at Hal. In the light from the lantern his face was a sickly yellow.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  In a voice that was suddenly dry and fearful, Rinaldi said, ‘The door’s locked.’

  For a moment Flora did not take it in. Then she said, ‘But we didn’t lock it—there wasn’t even a key.’

  ‘There isn’t one now,’ said Hal grimly, bending down to inspect the door more closely. ‘It might just be stuck—warped from the damp, perhaps.’ He grasped the handle and tried it and Flora saw the door frame move. ‘I think it is locked,’ said Hal. ‘The door itself is pliable within its frame—it’s actually quite loose fitting. It’s the lock that’s stopping it from opening: you can feel it. Rinaldi, have you got the key?’

  ‘I haven’t, sir. I don’t remember anyone ever locking this door, and I don’t remember ever hearing tell of any key. That’s the under-stage area beyond those steps: the grave trap shaft’s down there, of course, and the rest’s used for storage.’

  ‘Then how can the door be locked now?’

  ‘It’s an old lock,’ said Rinaldi, examining it again. ‘Apt to be unreliable, maybe?’

  ‘Apt to drop when the door’s shut a bit too sharply? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘It’s the only explanation I can think of, sir. Unless someone came back in here and deliberately locked it. And there’re only the two lots of keys to get into the theatre. I’ve got one set and Shilling’s got the other.’

  ‘And he’s lying in a hospital bed, poor chap. I can believe six impossible things before breakfast,’ said Hal, ‘but I don’t think I can believe in an unknown murderer somehow obtaining your keys without your knowledge, or stealing Shilling’s keys from his hospital sickbed, and then sneaking in here to lock that door.’

  ‘With a key that no one knew existed,’ put in Rinaldi.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Flora glanced at Hal, wondering whether to mention again the shadowy figure she had seen—thought she had seen—slipping into Platt’s Alley as they walked away on Monday night. At the time they had thought it was Shilling himself, but now it seemed it could not have been.

  She said, ‘In any case, there were only the three of us who knew what had happened. Oh, and that policeman—you were going to mention it all to him, Rinaldi. Did you do that in the end?’

  ‘I did, but it wasn’t the regular man,’ said Rinaldi. ‘It was someone standing in. He said he’d keep an eye out
, though. Take a walk along Platt’s Alley and so on.’

  Flora instantly felt better. It’ll have been the policeman I saw, she thought.

  ‘I think we can acquit the policeman, regular or temporary, of anything questionable,’ Hal was saying.

  ‘So do I,’ said Flora. ‘But how do we get the door open?’

  ‘Rinaldi, would you look in Shilling’s room, just in case there is a key?’

  ‘I will, sir, but I’m doubtful.’ Rinaldi went off, and Hal stood closely against the door, pressing his ear to its surface.

  ‘Can you hear anything?’ asked Flora.

  ‘Not a thing, but the door’s very thick.’

  ‘Try calling out.’

  ‘Reznik?’ called Hal loudly. ‘Are you in there? Can you hear me? Reznik? ’

  The words bounced and spun round their heads in the narrow passage, and died forlornly away.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Hal, and looked up as Rinaldi came back, shaking his head.

  ‘No key anywhere. Shilling himself would know if there was one, of course.’

  ‘I daresay he would, but the fewer people we involve in this the better. Is there any other way of getting into the cellar? Any other door? Those two ruffians probably aren’t there—they’ll have got out through the foyer door as we told them. This lock probably clicked down when they came out, but…’

  But you aren’t sure, thought Flora. Neither am I. Neither is Rinaldi. She said suddenly, ‘What about the stage trap? Does it still work? Could we operate it and get down that way?’

  Rinaldi looked at her with respect. ‘I should have thought of that,’ he said. ‘We don’t use it very often, but it’s kept oiled and in working order.’ Taking up the lantern he led the way to the stage.

  Flora was beginning to feel as if they were entering a nightmare. Nothing looked quite normal: the racks of clothes in the wardrobe, the familiar clutter of the green room, the odds and ends of discarded scenery… Everything’s distorted, she thought.

  Their footsteps echoed hollowly and several times it almost seemed as if the echoes had a life of their own. As if there’s someone following us, thought Flora uneasily, someone who’s creeping along behind us, trying to match his steps to ours, but missing every so often. Is it someone who pads round the theatre, singing quietly to himself? No, I don’t believe that. It really was just the building creaking I heard that night.

  The pulley wheels that worked the grave trap were high up in the wings. Thick ropes looped round them and hung down; in the blue-grey dimness they were like slumbering snakes. Rinaldi lit several gas jets and there was an old-fashioned wall sconce in a miniature cage which burned up brightly when he fired it. The oozing shadows dissolved in the light, but the feeling of unseen eyes watching them remained. As Rinaldi opened the stage curtains, Flora moved to the side of the stage and looked out into the dark well of the auditorium and then up to the stage box. Nothing.

  Hal was studying the pulley wheels. ‘How does this thing work?’

  ‘There’s a hand winch. You turn it and it loosens the ropes and causes the pulley wheels to move.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Hal, after a moment. ‘What is it—a drum and shaft principle?’

  ‘That’s right. A simple invention but perfectly reliable.’

  ‘The best inventions are usually very simple indeed. Shall you operate it since you know how it’s done while I go down in the thing?’

  ‘Begging pardon, sir, but it’s my job to go down there, and I’m more familiar with it. The mechanism’s easy enough to work—you just turn this handle.’

  ‘Fair enough. Sing out when you’re in position.’

  As Rinaldi walked across the stage, the old wall sconce suddenly flared up more brightly and Flora had the feeling of distortion again. But what was it? Something about the theatre itself? Something about the trap mechanism? But Rinaldi would have seen if there was anything wrong. Then is it something on the stage? The stage. Yes, that’s it, she thought. Something’s wrong with the stage. But what? She scanned the stage intently but although there were still pools of deep shadow everywhere, nothing seemed out of place. But her heart was pounding and sweat slid down between her shoulder blades. Rinaldi stopped abruptly and looked back into the wings.

  ‘Something wrong?’ said Hal, and with the words Flora suddenly saw that one of the pools of shadow was too sharply outlined. That’s where the trap is, she thought. That’s what I’ve been seeing.

  Rinaldi said, ‘Someone’s opened the grave trap.’

  The words sent a cold thrill of horror through Flora, but she moved cautiously towards the yawning blackness near the centre, and Hal left his post by the winch and joined her. Seen closer, the open trap had an eerie resemblance to an open grave. It’s just the name, she thought.

  ‘It is open,’ said Hal. ‘Although I don’t quite understand…’

  ‘Well, sir, the trap’s floor is always kept up here—to be flush with the stage. If an actor has to be lowered during a performance, he is. If it’s the end of a scene we probably leave the platform down until the curtain’s fallen, but mostly we bring it back up into place. That’s the safe thing to do, you see. It’s a quiet mechanism and the audience don’t hear it being worked, or if they do, they don’t know what it is. It was originally used for graveyard scenes— Hamlet and all of that,’ said Rinaldi. ‘We don’t do much of that kind of thing now, but the trap’s useful for panto sometimes. Demon kings and transformation scenes. But it’s never ever left open like this—why, I made sure it was in place myself when we locked up on Monday night, I really did.’

  He sounded genuinely upset, and Flora said, ‘Then someone’s opened it since then.’

  Someone trapped down there in the dark, trying to get out?

  They looked at one another. Hal said, ‘Is that possible? If the twins really were trapped, could they operate that machine from down there?’

  ‘It’d be difficult, sir. It’s a heavy old thing, that platform—it’s made of iron, in fact. But I suppose if you were desperate you might just about raise it from underneath.’

  If you were desperate… If you were imprisoned in the dark, without food or water…

  ‘Raise it to escape then lower it afterwards?’ said Hal. ‘That seems unlikely. But let’s take a look.’

  The lantern’s light poured straight down into the open shaft. There were the wooden struts, stretching all the way down, with, almost at the bottom, the iron platform.

  ‘If you tilt the lantern a bit more that way, sir, we can look all the way down—’

  As Hal tilted the lantern, the light fell straight onto the platform at the bottom. Flora gasped and was aware of Rinaldi’s soft cry in Italian. Something lay awkwardly on the platform: something whose sightless eyes were wide and staring, and whose face was the colour of clay.

  Hal said, ‘Dear God, it’s one of the twins. And I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’

  ‘Not entirely, but—wind this thing up, Rinaldi. We’ll have to get him back up here. Flora, you’d better wait at the side of the stage.’

  Rinaldi was already at the winch mechanism, throwing his weight into raising the trap as quickly as possible. It seemed to move easily enough, but it was not, as he had said, entirely noiseless, and to Flora’s ears the sounds were dreadfully like the moaning of a man dying slowly in the pitch dark.

  As the floor of the trap came level with the stage, she tried to look away, but could not. The twin—they still did not know which of them it was—lay in that same grotesque huddle. Dried, darkened blood spattered the edges of the iron floor, which Flora found grisly in the extreme.

  Hal dragged the body clear, and bent over to examine it. ‘I think it’s Stefan,’ he said. ‘Slightly longer hair than his brother.’

  ‘Yes, that’s Stefan,’ said Flora, determined not to give way to emotion of any kind. ‘Is he dead?’ she said, as Hal felt for a heartbeat.

  ‘I’m afraid he is, poor chap.’


  ‘But where’s Anton?’ said Flora. ‘Still down there?’

  They looked at one another. ‘We’ll have to find out,’ said Hal, at last. ‘Rinaldi, if I stand on the platform, will you winch it down again?’

  ‘Not alone, sir,’ said Rinaldi, at once. ‘Why, you don’t know if that other one mightn’t be lying in wait for you. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘But that means Flora would have to operate the mechanism,’ said Hal.

  ‘I could do that,’ said Flora, eyeing the wheel and the pulleys.

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Let’s try.’

  ‘Rinaldi, you hold the lantern. And watch for Anton.’

  ‘You’ll feel it stop when it reaches the bottom,’ said Rinaldi to Flora as the two men took up their places on the trap’s floor. ‘But we’ll call up to tell you anyway.’

  The winch was heavier than Flora had expected, but she managed to turn it reasonably easily. As the platform began to descend, the lantern flickered wildly, casting eerie shadows upwards onto the two men’s faces, and Flora found it deeply disturbing to be lowering them into that sinister blackness, where Anton Reznik might be waiting for them, no longer entirely sane after being imprisoned in pitch darkness for three days. She glanced nervously at Stefan’s prone body. Had it moved just then? Or let out a little pleading sigh? No, it was only the flickering and hissing of the gas jets.

  She was thankful to feel the platform bump to a stop and to hear Hal’s voice calling up that they were safely down, and she left the machinery and went back to the open trap, kneeling at the edge, peering down to see what was happening. She could not see either Hal or Rinaldi, but she could see movement and the lantern light, and after a moment Hal’s voice came up to her again, echoing slightly.

  ‘Flora? We’ve found Anton, and he’s alive. But he’s only just conscious, so we’re putting him onto the platform to get him out. Can you wind it back up when I give the word?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  The return journey was a grim one. The old machinery creaked badly this time—to Flora’s ears it sounded more than ever like the groans of a dying man—and with the three men on the iron floor it was heavier than before. But it reached the stage and Rinaldi sprang off the platform and came into the wings to lock the wheel into place.