Countess Lucy And The Curse Of Coberley Hall

by Guy Sheppard

  I seriously wondered whether or not to tear down my poster from the gate. I could justify my role of alarmist neighbour, but not of panic-monger. To credit the unknown with too much credence was to give monsters the benefit of the doubt.

  Suddenly my phone bleeped in my pocket. The call came as a shock. Yet, wrong was I not and most clearly did I have a signal.

  It was DC Jan Shriver, back at the office in London.

  ‘Great night! You should have been there. WHERE WERE YOU?’

  ‘Have patience,’ I promised her. ‘I will get back to you just as quickly as I can.’

  Any sooner, and it was like asking a drowned man to fill his lungs.

  *

  Upon returning downhill towards Coberley Hall, I retraced my footprints in the snow. Behind me, the empty road led back past the metal ring on the post office wall once used to tether horses. Except now on the white ground my black prints appeared to stretch forever into the distance. For days I might have been travelling, without sun or moon. The village I had chosen looked literally devoid of all habitation. A great tiredness overcame me, not because I was footsore or hungry but because my own flesh and blood felt such a burden.

  The abrupt realisation was unfamiliar. I stared down at my feet again to see my shadow mimic me with its thin, bony progress. With wasted arms and legs, with hideously distorted fingers which were so misshapen and wrinkled, it aped my every action with one of its own. Yet its chin was shaggy like a beast’s and from its open mouth protruded fangs, but being mere shadow there were no eyes. Despite it being such a black, formless thing, it pursued me with exultant, greedy malevolence. It would drag me down, if it could, as if I were the right prey for such a great bloodthirsty animal. A certain intelligence in its black mass saw it seek to claw at what remained of my desire for life.

  Furious at my brief feeling of unbelief, I was glad I had my shotgun to hand.

  14

  On top of a tomb in a quiet corner of Coberley Church of St Giles lay the full-size effigy of Sir Thomas de Berkeley, next to his recumbent wife. Although his chainmail and armour were a grim stony white, as were Lady Joan’s wimple, hood and gown, to see the dead retain their features in their chiselled faces was vaguely disconcerting. The day was one week after Sullivan O’Leary’s insufferable end, but that’s where any similarity between knight and poacher ceased.

  ‘Well, go on then,’ Lord Hart urged us, leaning heavily on his cane. ‘Set the bastard down.’

  ‘Doesn’t look as if he’ll be much missed,’ I hissed, glancing through the side chapel’s pointed arches.

  Most pews were deserted.

  Fact was, I had fully intended to leave for London days ago when George went out of his way to convince me that, because I was now in effect the new lord of the manor, it was only right and proper that I stay on long enough to be seen to observe the barest of obsequies on my first appearance in public.

  I helped shunt the coffin across the floor with a kick. When one man buried another he ought not to feel such a fraud in his borrowed black clothes, he ought not to strut about in his complimentary mourning like some sort of actor. I was dressed in more attire left behind by his lordship’s lost brother Philip. Actually, the look of the dead suited me rather well.

  *

  Of course O’Leary’s fate was a terrible tragedy, but what was a man to feel?

  Even as I ostentatiously massaged my sore shoulder, the three other pallbearers seemed to think me unsympathetic.

  But what should I have said after such an accident?

  Meanwhile, Lord Hart led the rector to one side in the South Chapel.

  ‘I’m afraid, George, that I consider it most improper.’

  ‘Proper or not, Canon Lacey, it must be done.’

  ‘But how does that fit in with today’s service?’

  I began to feel that simply by being present I was hindering some repugnant plan.

  Really, a burial was best done in a hurry.

  But what mattered my obstreperousness to them?

  Grumbling to himself, Canon Lacey bent over an odd little quatrefoil window. He crouched down rather stiffly to the cusped tracery of its unglazed, square hole that ran right through the limestone wall almost at floor level and made a very draughty exit to the outside world. Visible were the broken pins for the hinges where a door had once secured its missing contents. I did question why he saw fit to draw a hand bell from his robes, but once more was I subjected to a prim and sullen silence as I saw him proceed.

  When a man’s poor reputation went before him he could but bask in its afterglow.

  ‘You do realise this bell was last used for mass hundreds of years ago,’ said Canon Lacey. ‘It belongs to the old religion.’

  Lord Hart twice tapped his dragon cane hard on the floor.

  ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t ring it now.’

  ‘But it’s an old sanctus bell.’

  ‘It’s a blessing, in a way, that you still have it.’

  ‘I shan’t answer for the consequences.’

  ‘Damn it, man, I’ll do it myself, the devil I will.’

  With that, Canon Lacey shook the bell vigorously inside the hole in the wall.

  Once more, I stepped forward to venture an objection.

  Once more I was repulsed most sourly.

  So I turned on my heels and took my place in the exceedingly chilly nave. There I tried not to shiver on one of the unpleasantly hard pews. Among half a dozen villagers, Sara sat snivelling in front of me. I passed her my handkerchief, motioned to her to keep quiet, or else.

  Whereupon I saw Canon Lacey mount the steps to his very imposing, carved Jacobean pulpit. He would, I hoped, launch into an extempore discourse about the wrongs of someone who had thought they could get away with getting up to no good. I fully expected a fulsome spiritual condemnation of the wretch who had tried to poach my deer with such illicit and unsportsmanlike methods. I expected him to make up for the fact I wasn’t already in London.

  But it did make me shiver to sit so perfectly still, or otherwise put on a big show of respect for a nobody.

  Personally, I disagreed that the living had much to say to the dead. That was like suggesting that they could, once the book was closed, favour us with some sort of afterword or forgiveness.

  *

  At first an unexpectedly tongue-tied Canon stared right over our heads. With resolute, robust yet distinctly defensive determination he addressed not us but those not able to be present.

  ‘For the trumpet shall sound and the dead will be raised

  and we shall all be changed.

  The perishable must be clothed with the imperishable

  and the mortal must put on immortality.

  We shall not all sleep

  but we shall be changed.’

  His round fleshy face grew redder and redder. Soon I thought he might faint from some agitated, inner battle that raged in his heart. At one point I saw him dab his white forehead with his sleeve most extravagantly.

  His lordship nodded back very promptly.

  I could explain the contempt but not the courtesy. For, Canon Lacey made clear that if we did not all pull together today, if we did not raise our voices as one in tuneful harmony, then how could we hope to lift our own spirits, let alone those of the dead? I did attempt to join in, with a few words somewhere between tenor and bass, did try to make the great effort.

  Intercession was duly offered where we all replied dutifully Lord, have mercy. Then, following the Lord’s Prayer, an increasingly agitated rector gabbled The Blessing. We were all keeping the customary time of silence when a young woman rushed up the aisle full of pathetic apologies. Dressed in a long black woollen dress and matching shoes, she set herself down in a pew alongside me. She had hidden most of her striking auburn hair beneath a close fitting black hat but not her fringe, which was ragged. The hat’s flaps hid her ears, which given the sudden arctic temperature in the church was no bad thing. Sitting very upright, she exuded an air of
irritating and strict virtuosity as she fiddled shiveringly with the white lace cuffs at the end of her sleeves. Then she retied her scarf very fussily, because, after her came the most frightful draught. It blew with the forced blast of a furnace, rushed into the church as if something suddenly rarefied the air from above or behind us.

  Sure enough, there was a terrific bang of wood on stone.

  ‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘You left the door open.’

  *

  I intended to sit very still, to be a model parishioner, but there I was, staring up at the roof. It did seem to me that the oil lamp above my head began to sway on its long cable from the rafters. Back in use in the absence of any electricity, the heavy brass reservoir full of oil gathered momentum. The wick soon trailed black serpentine smoke from its swinging white glass shade. Other lamps started to do something very similar.

  At first I stayed as calm as I could.

  ‘You will not see any reason to call me any less reliable than anyone else,’ I thought.

  Then the organist played a wrong note. Abruptly, everyone did as I did and turned their heads, we felt the blast of icy air uncoil past the pews in more or less rapid natural motion. It snaked up into the pulpit and blew away the rector’s papers. My hymn book, too, opened and shut frantically. The chilly draught did a whistle-stop tour of the side chapel. That gale reared up into the roof where it blew ever more loudly and strongly before descending to snuff out the candles near the ancient communion table.

  Few knew what it took me to rush to help pick up the coffin, bear it out of the South Chapel and still maintain a solemn fixed expression.

  It was that sudden.

  *

  As for Lord Hart, he stood firm beside the pulpit, held his dragon cane aloft ready to command the air.

  ‘Show thyself! I dare you!’

  Immediately a bell in the tower began to toll.

  ‘For God’s sake, no,’ shouted Canon Lacey, clasping his hands to his ears and fled through the vestry doors.

  For a moment, I and the other hapless pallbearers came to a halt inside the porch.

  ‘Whatever does he mean?’ I cried, trying to rebalance the heavy wooden box straight on my shoulder. ‘Where on earth has the rector gone to?’

  A gap-toothed old man opposite me flashed me his gold fillings.

  ‘Canon Lacey’s in the tower.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Can’t you hear? That’s the tenor bell. It was cast in the seventeenth century and is never usually rung.’

  ‘You certain?’

  ‘I was church warden until very recently. You can take my word for it.’

  The passing bell jarred my brain with its tuneless, deafening decibels. I heard it wail every time its vicious tongue struck its thick sound-bow.

  At long last I dislodged the coffin from the doorway in order to steer a quick path to the graveside. Something else caused me to look up. Winged devils crawled about on hideous claws to hang off each crenelated corner of the bellowing bell tower. Their outsized, hooded eyes bulged at us from beneath their very serious brows while their gaping mouths vomited insults in stone. But they were just harmless gargoyles.

  At which point I realised that Lord Hart was no longer with us. Instead, there came a high-pitched cry from elsewhere in the churchyard. This was not that ridiculous display of emotion shown by him in the church a moment ago but a joyous screech of excited disbelief. He was staring at his brother’s violated grave, I observed.

  It fell to Peter to rush over to comfort him.

  Personally, I heard nothing beyond the word ‘miracle’.

  Then Canon Lacey returned at a brisk trot, even as the bell slowed to a more uniform stroke like a clock. Next, it stopped ringing entirely.

  ‘Thank God,’ I said to the warden. ‘Much more of that and my nerves might have shattered along with the bell.’

  It wasn’t that,’ corrected the rector. ‘Didn’t you notice: it was ringing backwards?’

  *

  The coffin came to rest crookedly in its frozen pit, when I saw Lord Hart depart for the nearby doorway in the wall.

  I started after him at once on this, the most direct route back to the Hall.

  ‘Can you please wait, George. We ought to talk.’

  He leaned on his stick but kept stumbling along.

  ‘Not now, Walker.’

  Immediately, James rushed between us, pushing a wheelchair and blanket ready to scoop up his master and transport him indoors. He would have me believe that he had suffered too much to answer the simplest question.

  ‘Where’s Rebecca?’ asked Lord Hart.

  ‘She ran off to the lake, sir.’

  ‘Go get her, Walker. Tell her to bring me my pills. Tell her it’s urgent.’

  ‘Got it.’

  That was the trouble with the infirm, I thought, they could so easily use their affliction to their own advantage.

  *

  Someone was already pushing her rowboat into the water, I discovered. I gave her a wave. It was the young woman who had sat beside me in the church. I was surprised that she did not notice.

  ‘Sorry to intrude,’ I lied, ‘but I didn’t get a chance to properly introduce myself. I’m Detective Inspector Walker.’

  ‘So I’ve heard tell,’ replied Rebecca sourly and pulled off her hat to spill her long fiery hair down her back like lava.

  Too late I came to a halt on the bank – she had rowed away from me. In profile her face was leaner than I remembered. She had a very strong jaw line, but her skin was a peculiar papery colour. Here was someone who stayed up too late or, like everyone else in Coberley Hall, never saw sufficient daylight.

  ‘Please, do you have Lord Hart’s pills, at all?’ I asked.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘He’s having an attack of nerves, on account of the fact that I think he saw someone in the church.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Easing her grip on her oars, Rebecca slowed her rowing.

  ‘Is he seeing things now?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then he can wait.’

  Tangled weed clawed and clung to her blades. There was definitely something malignant about how such a stagnant jungle could lie just below the surface.

  Not that I cared.

  ‘That business of the bell was very odd,’ I cried. ‘Did you see who rang it?

  ‘It was only the wind in the tower, Inspector.’

  ‘What about you? Are you all right? James said that you ran off suddenly. Or did you see someone, too?’

  She paused to select a sweet from a bag in her pocket.

  ‘Go away Mr Walker.’

  ‘Give me the pills and I will.’

  ‘No, I mean leave Coberley Hall, because after today you might not have the strength to do so.’

  ‘Why would I? It is, you know, all mine from now on.’

  Rebecca raised her face and her lips parted in a slight smile. Her sea-green eyes fixed mine both cynically and bitterly. Then unexpectedly, her indifference appeared to change more to a concern that I was not listening.

  ‘It’s too late for me, Inspector, but you can still keep one foot in the real world.’

  ‘Please, call me Colin.’

  ‘Let his lordship mess with your head and he’ll cause you to go down the same path I have. There’s something very wrong about Coberley Hall, but you still think that seeing is believing. Don’t delay your departure too long.’

  ‘Or maybe the fact that Lord Hart pays you so much to be at his beck and call says it all. I’ve read your name in the accounts.’

  ‘Place yourself in his shoes. How much would you gamble to bring the dead back from the grave, Mr Walker?’

  ‘You mean his brother?’

  For a moment her look spanned the watery divide between us, gave me a dangerous stare in case I was, after all, beyond all hope of prayers or imprecations.

  ‘Let yourself believe w
hat he does, Mr Walker and you’ll see and hear things that aren’t there, too.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You can rely on it.’

  ‘How does that make me different from you?’

  ‘Someone has to help fight what else comes through the door.’

  *

  Perhaps because Coberley had no pub there was to be no wake, thank goodness. I would not have to play at being everyone’s new suzerain over a few embarrassing beers or give some disingenuous tribute to the unrelated dead, after all.

  That night I couldn’t stop thinking about what Rebecca had told me.

  Fact: when someone died they were flesh and bone in the ground or ash in a casket. Fact: who knew where they went after that? The earth dissolved us or a blast of wind blew us wherever it wished into everlasting anonymity. But we could not say for sure where we came from or whether we returned and so it was that Lizzie’s face floated back into my head from her afterworld.

  Day 8. April 1. 2014.

  Sleepy after taking 2 Tramadol. Sick again. Needs liquid protein drinks and vitamins. Otherwise, too weak.

  Straight back to hospital to stabilise her regime and give her anti-nausea drug. Doctor: ‘We’ve not been doing our job properly.’

  Day 7. April 2. 2014.

  Body sicker but mind clearer. Holds my arm. Can’t walk far. Afraid she’ll vomit again in public.

  ‘I know what she wants, Colin. She’s told me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My friend. She says I must go back to where I began.’

  ‘Who is this friend, exactly?’

  ‘I can’t say yet. She won’t let me.’

  ‘So why does that, like, worry you?’

  Again Lizzie’s bloodshot eyes look away.

  ‘I don’t trust her.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, she is just a dream?’

  ‘But she looks so lonely.’

  ‘That it?’

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t ever ring Coberley Hall’s sanctus bell.’

  ‘No, but who would?’