I had fallen in love with a dead woman.
I hit my head with my balled up fist. Get a grip, you dunderhead! What’s come over you?
All this was a reaction to finding the dead woman. It had to be. It was a type of shock, like post traumatic stress disorder, or whatever it was called. It had affected me far more than I knew. I must have been so traumatised over the discovery and the sordid details of her death that I was bringing her to life. If she was alive she wasn’t dead, and so I could feel better about things.
And according to my amateur psychological diagnosis that had to be it. You cannot fall in love with a dead woman who had died before you were even born. There had to be a rational explanation.
But the M. R. James woman saw her too.
No, she didn’t answer that question directly, did she? Did you see her, I asked? And all she’d said was that it was cold. But she said she was pretty…
Christ, I must be going mad!
I picked up the phone. I needed to make an appointment to see the doctor.
‘It’s Madeline,’ she said.
I started, dropped the phone back onto its cradle with a loud clatter. ‘Bloody hell!’ I said, jumping back. She was standing beside me.
‘It’s Madeline,’ said the woman from the Blue Lias. ‘My name is Madeline. Your Madeline.’
‘My Madeline?’ I said, bewildered. ‘What do you want from me?’ I asked coldly, feeling a wild sea of churning emotions thrashing about inside me.
‘I want us to be happy together,’ she said. Her eyes suddenly became very sorrowful.
‘This can never work,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Hell, I can’t believe I even said that.’ I closed my eyes tight and put my hands over my ears. ‘Go away.’
I waited a few seconds and then opened my eyes. She was still standing there, except now her eyes had filled with tears. It was such a heart-wrenching sight, and I now felt so sorry I’d ever said those things to her.
‘We can work it out, Toby,’ she said imploringly. ‘I owe you everything. You saved me, Toby. You saved my life.’
‘I didn’t,’ I said, confused. ‘I discovered you…’
‘If it hadn’t have been for you, Toby, I would have died.’
I was speechless. Here was a woman who, for some bizarre reason, didn’t know she had been murdered and worst of all thought that I had saved her life in some way. I didn’t know what to say next. But I was deeply troubled by her sobbing.
‘Don’t cry,’ I said. ‘Things will be fine…’
‘You don’t love me anymore, do you, Toby?’
The words trembled on the edge of my lips, awaiting that final, Herculean push.
‘Yes, I do love you,’ I said.
She wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Really? You’re not just saying that?’
I nodded. ‘I have never loved anyone as much as I have loved you.’ And I meant that sincerely.
Her face beamed.
And then she disappeared again and I was left staring at a map of India pinned on the wall opposite.
I sank down to my chair, completely drained emotionally and feeling totally exhausted, as if just being with her had sapped my very soul.
So what now?
I had no immediate answer to that. I sat at my desk long into the night, my appetite completely destroyed, my emotions in ribbons and time ceasing to have any meaning. I cannot begin to describe the turmoil I had to endure that night.
Madeline. She said her name was Madeline.
I could tell the police. They’d have a major lead.
Sure, so what would they say? How do you know that, sir? Really, her ghost told you that? Now tell us truthfully, sir, how do you really know her name? I could picture it now, being branded a nutcase, and then if they managed to corroborate it they’d want to know my involvement, and I saw myself having to defend myself, telling them I wasn’t even born when she was murdered. It could all get a bit messy. So I decided against that for now. I mean, I might really be a nutcase and the name Madeline could be something that I plucked from my imagination.
I groaned and rested my weary head in my hands.
I could find out what happened to her myself, carry out my own investigations, I thought. After all, if she really was the ghost of the woman from the Blue Lias then I had the best witness to the murder that anyone could ever have. The victim herself.
But how do you quiz a ghost that doesn’t know it is dead without upsetting it, or even letting on that it’s dead?
I never thought I’d ever have to consider that kind of thing. But I was determined to find out who murdered her. I even thumped my desk, like a noisy full stop to my resolve.
Then my heart sank. If I ever discovered who murdered her then surely her earthbound spirit would finally be freed and I would never see her again.
Did I want that to happen? Was I selfish enough to want to keep her here with me forever because I’d inadvertently fallen in love with a ghost?
She said she loved me too. That must count for something.
So would she prefer love and limbo to death and eternal peace?
Toby Turner, I said to myself, you’ve got to admit it; you’re going bloody crazy.
It was way past midnight by the time I’d shifted all the crime books to the back of the shop and brought the Thomas Hardy novels and poetry to the front.
She’d like that, I thought, admiring my handiwork.
9
Missing
I could never predict where she’d appear next.
It was now the beginning of November. Madeline had appeared to me a few times since I told her I loved her. In the shop, sometimes with other people in it, sometimes not; upstairs in my flat, wandering through the rooms, occasionally passing a comment, looking like she owned the place; and once lying in bed beside me. That was the most startling time of all.
As usual the air in the bedroom went frigid. I’d grown used to it now. So I sat up in bed expecting to see her standing by the door, or by the bed somewhere. I was not expecting her to be lying in my double bed.
You’d think this would freak any normal person out, but I’d long ago come to the conclusion that I wasn’t normal. I was surprised, yes. I mean, in one’s bedroom is one thing; in one’s bed another thing entirely.
All I could see was her head sticking above the bedcovers, her hair spread out on the pillow. She was lying motionless, staring up at the ceiling, her eyes looking upon some faraway scene.
‘Are you alright?’ I asked when I’d composed myself. I wondered whether if I slid my hand across the sheet I’d touch something. I resisted the urge.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she said.
The irony of it wasn’t lost on me. ‘Why?’ I said.
She shrugged, her chin nuzzling down onto the top of the bedcovers. ‘Nightmares…’
‘Want to tell me about them?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘No.’
‘It may do you good.’ I bit my lower lip. ‘Are they to do with what happened to you?’ I ventured.
Silence. I saw the muscles in her incorporeal jaw quiver. She nodded. Closed her eyes. I swore I detected the glistening of a silvery tear, shimmering like a tiny pearl droplet in the corner of her lid. ‘The house on the cliff…’ she said, hardly any substance to the words, expelled like a sad breath.
‘A house?’
She nodded. ‘I see it in my dreams. I’m locked in there and I can’t escape. It’s pitch black, but I grope around till I find the locked door, and I scream and scream but no one answers me, and I feel myself being suffocated by the dark…’
‘Which house on the cliff?’
She turned to me, her eyes awash with frustration. ‘You know which house, Toby!’ she burst, and the ghostly tear was dislodged to land on the pillow.
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, feeling I’d pushed her too hard too fast. When I next looked at her she had gone, the bedcovers gently deflating and flattening out.
I
sighed. You idiot, I said to myself. You have to take this slowly.
I frowned when I saw the tiny grey patch where her tear had fallen onto the pillow next to me. I reached out a tentative finger.
It was still wet.
Tuesday morning. Bertram Moffat came into the shop as regular as clockwork, that ugly labradoodle of his leading the way and dragging him inside.
‘Horrid day outside,’ he said, the massive dog shaking itself and rainwater flying everywhere. He began his usual Tuesday morning shift of browsing my shelves of books.
What the hell did he get out of this, I thought miserably? I was feeling miserable because I’d not seen Madeline for a few days now and was worried I’d scared her off. Bertram Moffat was an unwelcome intrusion into my shrinking, insular world. Mark had telephoned me the day before, left a message on my answer machine. He didn’t sound quite himself, maybe even a little upset, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone except Madeline. So I ignored his message for me to get back to him, for us to meet up. His voice sounded like he wanted to talk about something, but I was in no mood to listen. Even then I was aware of the change in me and that it wasn’t altogether healthy, but like a smoker who knows the risks I went ahead anyway and continued the job of wrapping myself in my increasingly self-imposed isolation.
‘Looking for anything in particular, Mr Moffat?’ I asked, deliberately emphasising my vexation. But he’d been waterproofed against such showers.
‘Not really. I don’t think you have what I’m looking for,’ he said.
The dog looked like it might cock its leg up against one of my shelves and I narrowed my eyes. ‘If you told me what you’re looking for then maybe I could help you.’
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said.
I grunted and bent my head to my accounts books. I’d lost all interest in them long ago. I had no idea how I was doing business-wise. Probably badly, so what was the point?
Then I thought about what Madeline had said in my bed. ‘Mr Moffat, you’re a born-and-bred Lyme Regis man, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right.’ He took a book down, curled his nose up at it and put it back.
‘The Blue Lias cliffs on Monmouth Beach…’
‘What about them?’
‘Was there ever a house up there?’
He turned to me, blinked vacantly for a second or two then studied his wet shoes very thoughtfully. ‘Several, over the years.’
‘Oh. What sort?’
He eyed me with something like irritation. ‘You know, farmhouses and the like. Nothing much. Apart from the hotel.’
‘So there was a hotel? Would it have been above where the young woman’s body was found?’
He gave a gargling-type chuckle. ‘Leave the detective work to PC Plod, eh? Actually, it was situated quite a distance from where the woman was found, a little further up the coast as far as I can remember. But it’s been gone a long time and the land has changed so much over the years as to be unrecognisable, making it hard to remember exactly where the thing was.’
‘What was the hotel called? What happened to it?’
He forced out a sigh. ‘You’re very insistent this morning, Mr Turner,’ he said. ‘Let’s see, what was it called now?’ He squeezed his eyes shut in concentration. ‘The Belle Vue, I think. Large Victorian place that had been converted for use as a hotel in the 1950s…’
‘But what happened to it?’ I asked again.
‘It fell over the cliff and into the sea in 1980, I think. There have been many landslips over the years – you know how it is around those parts – and the hotel gradually got closer and closer to the edge. Finally there was this big storm in 1980 – or was it 81? Anyway, it took away a great chunk of land. They’d already evacuated the hotel because of huge cracks that had appeared in its walls. Good thing, too, because half of it tumbled down onto the beach during the night. They demolished the rest of it. Sometimes you can finds bits of brick from the hotel lying on the beach, rounded off now and looking like red pebbles. It was owned by the Burns family. Poor people; it nearly ruined them. They had to find another hotel to buy and run, start all over again from scratch.’
Could this have been the house Madeline had referred to? The one she’d been locked inside? Or was I clutching at straws? After all, she said it had been a house, not a hotel. And it had been a nightmare, and nightmares – even ghostly nightmares, presumably – are not real.
‘So where are the owners now?’
‘Marie and Ted Burns are both dead,’ he said flatly. ‘It was a car accident. Collided head-on with an Austin Allegro that hadn’t been taxed and insured. Not that that would have made a difference. Nice, friendly couple, they were. They had a Yorkshire terrier called Spratt. That wasn’t so nice. They were a very musical family – Ted used to play the piano rather well and Marie had a really nice voice. She’d sing down at the church sometimes. People used to say they could have been very successful on the stage if they’d had a mind, but that sort of thing wasn’t for them. They were good, old-fashioned, hardworking people, the Burns. The Belle Vue had a five-star rating because of the decent way Marie and Ted treated people. They’d be horrified that a woman’s body had been found in the vicinity. If they’d been alive, of course. They were devoted Christians. Why do you ask?’
‘Just curious,’ I said.
‘Steely Jacobs might be able to tell you more,’ he said.
‘Really? Why Steely Jacobs?’
‘He used to do odd-jobs for Marie and Ted when he wasn’t playing in that rock and roll band of his. He needed the money, you see. No money in music back then. Anyhow, they let Steely put his old caravan in one of the fields that belonged to the hotel – he couldn’t afford to rent or buy a house at the time – and in return for this rent-free site, out of sight of the hotel of course, he used to do a bit of work around the place and sometimes his band would play at the hotel for free. They went down really well with the guests, I’m told, but I could never see what others saw in all that rock and roll stuff. I was a Glen Campbell man myself.’
‘Have you told the police about the hotel?’ I asked.
‘Why would I?’ he said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the murder. No more than any of the other houses that stood there.’
‘How do you know? It could be important.’
‘It’s a coincidence the body was found nearby. I know of at least two farmhouses that went over the same stretch of cliff in recent memory. I read about them in the booklet the local history group wrote. It’s been happening for many years. Anyway, I’m sure the police are diligent enough to find out such things if they wanted to. Now please can I get on with my looking?’
I thanked him for his time. Then said, ‘Mr Moffat…’
‘Yes?’ he replied impatiently. He clearly wanted to throttle me.
‘Don’t let your dog pee all over Delia Smith,’ I warned.
I picked up another message from Mark later that evening. ‘You got a minute?’ he said, but his voice was dreadfully slurred and I had to force myself to forget my obsession with Madeline’s death and put my coat on to brave the chilly night air.
I drove the five miles or so over to Mark’s house in my reluctant, spluttering Volkswagen Golf. It was a nice old house, Georgian, set all alone in its own grounds. It once belonged to a man who had some kind of stake in the Cornish tin mines and was crammed with original period features, and even some of the original furniture, all of which appealed to Mark, a man who made his living buying and selling antiques.
I recalled how he started the business, buying loads of cheap pottery and the like from car boot sales, charity shops and auctions, and hawking them around the many antique fairs. Sometimes he didn’t make enough to pay off the hire of the pitch. But he kept at it, learning all the time and determined to show everyone that he could make a success of it, especially when he was constantly being told there was no money in old things. Well, he’d proved them all wrong. He now travelled the UK and Europe buying and selling antiq
ues at the higher end of the market, a market that didn’t seem to be affected by any recession thrown at it. A lot of his trading was done online now. He kept an antique shop in Sherborne, but mainly for old time’s sake as he didn’t really need it. His operations were predominantly run from his home and a large warehouse in which to store and transport stock from.
But money didn’t buy him complete happiness. He couldn’t make relationships work. Maybe he was too driven, too wrapped up in making a success of things, who knows? As I pulled up outside his house I mused on this blinkered determination. Had it something to do with the sad incident in his past, with the murder of his young girlfriend? He took the full brunt of the blame, apparently, at least for a time. Had that left him with emotional scars he was trying to heal? Was he always going to have something to prove, even at the expense of close relationships? I know our relationship had been fraught at times. He could be a real hothead and say the most hurtful things if he had a mind to, but he’d always come slinking back like a dog with its tail between its legs, apologetic and full of remorse, and of course I’d always forgive him.
The front door was open so I went inside, calling out his name. All the lights were burning. I never grew tired of seeing the old Georgian house decked out in period furniture, hangings and ornaments. Mark had a real love affair with the period. Taken together, it must be worth a small fortune, I thought, though Mark would have berated me if I’d said it out loud. ‘You can’t put a price on beauty,’ he’d say.
What wasn’t so beautiful was the way Mark was sprawled against the sofa in the drawing room, sitting on a Persian rug with a bottle of wine in his hand. There were many bottles and glasses all around him, like a party had been in full swing in this one spot with only one guest. It looked like this had been going on for days. The way Mark’s bleary eyes tried to focus on me, how his head wobbled uncontrollably, the maniacal grin, confirmed it. What’s more there was a patch of vomit down his shirtfront, and his rumpled clothes looked like he’d slept in them. Twice.
The D.M. Mitchell Supernatural Double bill Page 27
