Property of a Lady

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘A real prowler after all?’ Nell felt a bump of fear. ‘Not just a nightmare or amnesia?’ But I don’t want him to be real, she thought. I don’t want Beth to have been threatened by someone who might still be around, still watching her. The man with holes where his eyes should be, the man who sings that macabre rhyme . . .

  ‘I’m not sure if he was a prowler at all,’ said Michael. ‘I’m not really sure what he was.’ He paused as their food was brought and set down. ‘I told you there were two things,’ he said, after the waitress had gone. ‘And it’s the other thing that’s worrying me.’ He frowned, as if searching for the right words, then said, ‘My god-daughter, Ellie, has been having nightmares that sound identical to Beth’s.’

  ‘The man with holes where his eyes should be.’ It felt even worse to say the words aloud than it had to have them inside her mind. Nell wanted to gather Beth up and move as far away as possible from Marston Lacy and forget all this had ever happened. But if another child was having the same terrors as Beth . . . ‘That’s really disturbing,’ she said, after a moment.

  ‘Yes, but what if it’s just a fairly common manifestation of a child’s secret fears?’ said Michael. ‘I have no way of knowing that. It would need a psychiatrist specializing in the problems of children.’ He made an impatient gesture with one hand. ‘But I don’t know very much about children.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I do. Children can have quite severe nightmares, though. Tell me about Ellie’s. There might be all kinds of differences.’

  ‘There is one difference,’ said Michael. ‘Ellie has another character in the nightmare. She says the man is trying to find someone.’

  Nell stopped with a forkful of lasagne halfway to her mouth. ‘Elvira,’ she said. ‘Is it Elvira he’s trying to find?’

  ‘Yes. How on earth did you know that?’

  ‘Because earlier this evening, Beth said she hadn’t been as frightened of the man as she might have been, because she wasn’t the one he wanted. He wanted Elvira.’ The lasagne, which was beautifully cooked and served with crisp warm Italian bread, and which Nell had been enjoying, suddenly tasted of nothing.

  At last Michael said, ‘Does Beth know anyone called Elvira?’

  ‘No. Nor do I. I’ll bet you’d have to go a long way to find anyone called Elvira these days. Michael, what is all this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I think we need to find out who – or what Elvira is. The first thing to do, is for me to ask Jack a bit more about Ellie’s dreams.’

  ‘Don’t alarm them unnecessarily,’ said Nell. She liked the sound of Liz Harper and her family, and it would be terrible to put needless fears in their minds.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll email them as soon as I get back to Oxford.’ Then, as the waitress hovered, ‘Would you like anything else to eat? No? A cup of coffee?’

  Nell shook her head. When the waitress had gone, she said, ‘I was thinking you could email from the flat if you like. You’re welcome to use my computer – I’ve got Liz Harper’s email address on it.’

  ‘It’s a bit late to do that now,’ he said slowly.

  ‘It needn’t take long. And if you send something tonight there might be a reply as soon as tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But I’ll use my own laptop – I brought it with me thinking I might do some work and thinking the Black Boar would have Internet connection, but it doesn’t, at least not for customers. There might be an email from Jack to pick up, as well. Wait here, will you, and I’ll get it from my room.’

  If it had felt odd to dine with a man again, it felt even odder to be unlocking her own door and going up to the sitting room with him. There was a moment when Nell wondered if she was being stupid, inviting this near-stranger into her home late at night. But it was not so very late – barely ten o’clock – and in a way this was a semi-business arrangement. The trouble was that she was out of practice at dealing with a situation involving herself and a single man. On the heels of this thought came another one: that Michael Flint was actually quite attractive – the dark hair and eyes, and the diffidence mingled with undoubted intelligence. And the vague impression that in certain situations he might be very far from diffident . . .

  She was instantly horrified and sickeningly aware of disloyalty to Brad. It would be gratitude to Michael she was feeling, nothing more. Relief that Beth was safe. There was some German phrase about immense emotion being churned up towards people with whom one shared a danger or a difficult situation – this would be an example of that.

  She pointed out the Internet connection so he could plug in the laptop and, as he sat down at the desk, headed for the kitchen to make coffee. As the percolator hissed and bubbled, Nell’s thoughts strayed again and she found herself wondering if he was linked up with anyone. He had said he was not married, but he would be sure to have some incredibly learned female don eagerly waiting for him at Oxford. Someone who was fluent in five or six languages, or wrote papers on ancient Sanskrit or obscure corners of medicine, and who lectured to immensely scholarly societies. One of those women who wore infuriatingly-flattering glasses and scooped their hair into loose chignons with apparent carelessness, but looked fantastic. Thinking man’s crumpet. Was it Joan Bakewell who had originally inspired that phrase? The coffee blew a series of loud raspberries, and Nell reached hastily for the jug and poured the steaming brew into mugs.

  Michael had tangled up the laptop’s power lead with the Internet cable and was half lying under the desk, frowningly trying to sort them out.

  He looked up as she came in. ‘I don’t think this is right, do you? I’m not actually terribly good at mechanical things or electronic things.’ He looked so perplexed that Nell laughed properly for the first time in twenty-four hours and said, ‘It looks as if you’ve been trying to plug the phone cable into the mains. Come out of the way and let me do it. If the battery’s sufficiently charged, you don’t really need to connect to the mains, not for the few minutes it’ll take to type an email.’

  ‘I can generally get somebody else to do this kind of thing,’ he said apologetically as Nell crawled under the desk and connected the laptop’s USB cable to the phone line. ‘Thanks, Nell. I’m fine from here on.’

  As soon as the laptop came on and the email programme opened, Nell saw the email with the name Jack Harper on the ‘From’ line at once. Her heart leapt, even though she told herself it would contain an ordinary message, something to do with Charect House’s renovations. She sat in the deep armchair, her hands curled round her mug of coffee, trying not to watch as Michael read the email. But when he said, ‘Oh God,’ a voice within her said: something is wrong.

  ‘Come and see this,’ he said, getting up from the desk.

  Nell, her heart racing, sat down and began to read.

  Michael—

  We’re thinking we might have to get Ellie away from Maryland for a time to see if it will cure these nightmares. Last night was by far the worst ever, and in the end we took her to ER. They checked just about everything that could be checked – all absolutely fine. All they could do in the end was hold her down and sedate her. If you’ve ever seen a seven-year-old girl restrained by two nurses and given chlorpromazine – well, I shouldn’t think you have, but it’s killing to see it. Liz was devastated, and so was I, although I didn’t show it as much as she did. Maybe I absorbed some British reserve at Oxford.

  They’re waving the prospect of psychs at us, of course. It’s this business of ‘Elvira’ they’re worried about, and we understand that because we’re agonizingly worried about Elvira as well. I don’t know very much about schizophrenia or whatever it’s correctly called nowadays, but what I do know is that last night Ellie screamed Elvira’s name over and over again. Most of what she said was unintelligible – hysterical sobbing – but at one stage she said, very clearly, “He’s going to get her very soon. Only he mustn’t, he really really mustn’t . . .” She clung to me, shouting, “Daddy, don
’t let him get her – promise you won’t let him . . . She’s so frightened of him . . .”

  I promised I wouldn’t let anyone get Elvira – wouldn’t you have done the same? I said she was safe and Elvira was safe – Michael, I’d have promised her the moon and the universe to reassure her. But then I said, “In any case, hon, that man can’t ever get at anyone – he’s safely locked out.”

  Ellie started sobbing again then. She said, between anger and panic, “But that’s just it, Daddy. You’re so stupid, you don’t understand. He can get in anywhere, he can. Because he can do the dead man’s knock on the door. When he does that, the doors open for him. All locks open to the dead man’s knock.”

  Truly, Michael, I’ve never heard anything so all-out chilling in my life. Ellie believes all this – she believes this man is trying to find ‘Elvira’ – that he can get inside houses by means of a dead man’s knock, and I know that sounds like a macabre party game, but it’s what she said and I’ve no idea where she got hold of such a grisly idea.

  What I do know is that Ellie believes when this man finds Elvira he’ll harm her in some appalling way she can’t explain.

  The medics think Ellie’s had some sort of traumatic experience at the hands of an adult – something we don’t know about – and that she’s transferring the bad experience on to an alter ego. And it’s true the names are similar – Ellie and Elvira. But Liz and I would know if Ellie had been hurt or frightened or – oh God – abused. I can’t believe I wrote that last word. I’m sure we’d know, though. Ellie’s in school all day, and Liz takes and collects her along with a bunch of other kids. She and three neighbors take turns. So we know where she is all the time. We know her friends and their families. And listen, I know that’s what all parents of abused kids say, but I’m absolutely convinced nothing’s happened to her. And it can’t be right to put a seven-year-old into analysis.

  Sorry for the long and (I’m afraid) emotional rant – but it feels like talking to you to write it all down. Like all those nights we used to thrash out the world’s problems and our own into the small hours and I used to drink too much, because most of the problems were generally mine. You hardly ever got drunk, did you, and on the rare occasions when you did go over the top, all that happened was that you had a look of soulful decadence next morning – like a romantically-inclined monk who went on the loose and found it so good that he was wondering if he should do it again.

  Anyhow, here’s the thing. If Charect House is anywhere near habitable, we think we really will come over for Christmas. It would do Ellie – and Liz – so much good. Different places, different people.

  Talking of people, we’re looking forward to meeting the cool-sounding Nell West. Also your mystery lady who looked out of Charect’s window that day. Or are they one and the same?

  Till soon,

  Jack

  As Nell finished reading and sat back in the chair, Michael said, a bit awkwardly, ‘That last bit – Jack thought there was someone in one of the photos I sent him of Charect. It looked as if someone was peering out of an upstairs window, and he thought . . . There wasn’t anyone, of course, it was a trick of the light.’

  Nell did not care, at that minute, whether Michael had imported an entire bed-full of females to Marston Lacy or whether he had been presiding over a modern-day harem in Charect House. She was still drained from so nearly losing Beth, and she was horrified at what Jack Harper had written.

  She said, ‘That poor little girl. But that stuff about the dead man’s knock . . .’

  ‘Horror films? TV?’ He said it tentatively.

  ‘I don’t think it’s either of those,’ said Nell. ‘Beth mentioned it, almost in the same words as Ellie.’ She frowned, then said, ‘We can’t very well email to ask for information about Ellie, can we? Not now.’

  ‘No.’

  Nell paused, then said, ‘But – there’s this, as well.’ She reached for Alice Wilson’s journal, which she had left on top of the bookshelf. She had taken a photocopy of the pages, and she had known, since they had sat down to eat at the Black Boar, that she was going to let Michael see the original.

  ‘What is it?’ He was already scanning the first few lines.

  ‘Diaries from a haunted house is probably the best description,’ said Nell. ‘It makes strange reading. It’s got the same reference in it – the dead man’s hand. Let me find it for you.’

  She flipped through the pages, and Michael read the grisly chant aloud:

  ‘“Open lock to the dead man’s knock . . .

  Fly bolt, and bar, and band . . .

  Sleep all who sleep – wake all who wake.

  But be as the dead for the dead man’s sake . . .’

  He looked up from the journal. ‘That’s pretty chilling,’ he said. ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘It’s from something called the Ingoldsby Legends. I’d never heard of it, but I looked it up after I read that journal – and after Beth talked about the rhyme. One of the legends used in it is called the Hand of Glory. It’s about a grisly old country belief that the hand of a murderer can cast an enchanted sleep and cause all doors to become unlocked – I can’t believe I’ve just said that.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve just said it, either. I’ve heard of the Ingoldsby Legends,’ said Michael thoughtfully, ‘but I’ve never read them. It’s a Victorian collection of myths and legends. Some of them quite comical – almost parodies. But it’s fiction, surely?’

  ‘Sort of fiction. It’s based on genuine old superstitions, seemingly. And this Hand of Glory thing is apparently a very old belief indeed.’

  ‘The power of the dead over the living,’ he said thoughtfully, and Nell was grateful for his instant comprehension. ‘Yes, that’ll go back thousands of years.’

  ‘Beth said she had a – an absolute compulsion to go after the music,’ said Nell. ‘She was quite upset about that – she knows she mustn’t talk to strangers or go off with them, but she said it was as if the music pulled her along.’

  ‘That’s quite creepy,’ said Michael. ‘It’s almost taking us into Pied Piper territory. But I can’t see, at the moment, how it fits in to all the other things.’

  ‘Nor can I. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea for Liz and Jack to bring Ellie to Marston Lacy.’

  ‘Because of Elvira,’ said Michael.

  ‘Yes. Only, I don’t know how you’d put them off without telling them the truth.’

  ‘And the truth is so off the wall, they’d probably think I was losing all grip on sanity,’ said Michael. ‘I suppose I could tell them to delay the trip because the house doesn’t look as if it’ll be ready by Christmas.’

  ‘Would that work?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ll do my best,’ said Michael, opening a new email message and starting to type. ‘I think that’s strong enough,’ he said after a couple of minutes. ‘I’ve implied it’s unlikely there’ll be any electricity or hot water.’

  ‘That would certainly put me off,’ said Nell. ‘If Liz happens to email me again – about the clock or anything else for the house – d’you want me to say anything to her? I don’t mean about what’s happening to Ellie or Beth, but just an offhand remark about the renovations seeming to take a long time.’

  ‘I think it’s probably better not.’

  ‘All right. Michael, is it possible that Ellie has read the Ingoldsby Legends?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘I’m as sure as I can be that Beth hasn’t.’ Nell drank the remains of her coffee, then said, ‘That grave where you found her. Whose grave was it?’

  ‘I didn’t notice. It was quite an old one, though.’

  For a moment Nell wanted to believe it did not matter whose grave it had been. But those two other girls had been found in that churchyard, and supposing they had been on the same grave . . . ?

  She looked at Michael, willing him to follow her thoughts. It seemed he did, because he said, ‘What time are you collecting Beth tomorrow
?’

  ‘They said any time after ten. Ward rounds and discharge procedure have to be dealt with first, I think. So I was going to get there for about quarter past.’

  ‘It’s only three or four miles to St Paul’s Church. Shall I pick you up at half past eight tomorrow morning?’

  ‘I could do it on my own,’ began Nell.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you had someone with you?’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes, of course it would. Thank you.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ he said, picking up Alice Wilson’s journal and reaching for the laptop, ‘I’ll take the ghosts back to the Black Boar.’

  ELEVEN

  After Michael had gone, Nell rinsed the coffee things, then fell into bed and went instantly into a deep, more or less dreamless, sleep. She woke at seven to the sound of birdsong, and remembered that Beth was all right and in just over three hours she would be home. She smiled, planning how she would make all Beth’s favourite things for lunch, then remembered about meeting Michael and leapt out of bed and headed for the shower.

  Michael phoned shortly after eight, to say he would pick her up in twenty minutes if that was all right.

  ‘Fine. I’ll look out for you and come straight down.’

  ‘Did you sleep? And is Beth all right this morning?’

  ‘Bright as a button.’ Nell had phoned the hospital at twenty to eight and the staff nurse had said Beth was about to eat breakfast and was looking forward to coming home.

  As they drove down the High Street, Michael said, ‘I read Alice Wilson’s journal. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Once I started I had to read all the way through to the end – it was nearly one a.m. before I finished it. It’s classic ghost stuff, of course – those three knocks on the door. In fact—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Only that I thought I heard someone knocking the first time I was there,’ he said. ‘It was probably something outside, but it was very macabre.’

  Nell said, ‘It was the part where she talked about hearing things not meant for human ears I found so chilling.’