The Stranger Diaries

by Elly Griffiths

  I look back at my diary entry, almost willing it to be different this time, and, as I do so, I notice something written at the very bottom of the page. Tiny letters, all in capitals.

  hallo, clare. you don’t know me.

  Chapter 8

  Hallo, Clare. You don’t know me. The words echo in my head all evening, as I chat to Georgie about Tash’s new hairstyle and remind her that her history homework is due the next day. I offer Georgie some supper but she says she has eaten with Tash. Whenever Georgie refuses food, an alarm bell goes off in my head — ’anorexia alert!’ — but although she’s very thin (like me), she doesn’t look unhealthy. Anyhow, I can’t face food either. I take Herbert for a last walk along the road. There are only a few street lights for our fake street of town houses, otherwise the darkness of the countryside is all around. Cars are rare at this time of night so Herbert and I walk in the road, him teasing me by pretending to lift his leg on bushes and then thinking better of it.

  Hallo, Clare. You don’t know me.

  Someone has written in my diary. I didn’t recognise the handwriting. It was thin and spiky, written with what we used to call an italic pen. I keep thinking of that bit in I Claudius where Caligula drives his father to madness and death by, amongst other things, writing his name on the wall in tiny letters. One letter less each day until, by the time that he got to the G in Germanicus, his father was dead. Who is my Caligula?

  This isn’t getting me anywhere. I have to think about who might have had access to the diary. It was with me in Hythe and I might have taken it into work a couple of times. But I’m always very careful not to write when anyone’s watching. Even Georgie has never seen me writing in it. There’s something rather strange and obsessive about keeping a diary. It’s not exactly a secret but it’s not something I would ever discuss, either. But Ella had known.

  It’s all there in the diary entry. ‘Clare keeps a diary.’ ‘I didn’t think anyone did that except in Victorian novels.’ Could Ella have written it? On the one hand, it would be the sort of thing she would have thought funny (the past tense is becoming easier) but, on the other, it doesn’t look like her handwriting, which was large, loose and flowing.

  I also can’t stop thinking about ‘Hell is empty’. The Tempest is a set text for GCSE. I’m pretty sure Harbinder Kaur will have checked this and know that everyone in the English department is familiar with this line; it’s what we call a ‘key quotation’. But does Kaur know that it also comes into R.M. Holland’s short story? If so, she must think that the note points to me. Can she seriously think that I was involved in Ella’s murder? I remember her asking what I was doing on that Sunday night, whether anyone was with me. Did she, even then, have her suspicions about me? And they’d asked for a sample of my handwriting. Were they doing that with everyone? I’m becoming so paranoid that I actually start to wonder if my handwriting was on the original note.

  Herbert finally has a wee and we go back into the house. Georgie is in her room, I can hear the Friends theme tune coming from her laptop. Simon and I were always determined not to let her have a TV in her room, but in her MacBook, she has a portable TV/cinema/CD player/camera/video recorder that she takes everywhere with her. I turn off the lights downstairs and double lock the front door. Herbert watches me, head on one side, as if wondering why I’m being so security conscious. Then I check the back door again and take my phone and handbag upstairs with me. Just in case.

  In bed I look carefully through the pale blue diary but the mysterious handwriting doesn’t strike again. I can’t face looking in any other diaries. At 1997 (‘Reader, I married him’), or 2002 (‘Georgia May Newton was born today’) or 2013 (‘My divorce became final today. Dark, dark, dark’). Instead I get out my current diary and begin to write.

  The next day is Halloween and I have to hold my first after-school rehearsal of Little Shop of Horrors. I’m not keen on Georgie coming home to an empty house but don’t want to spook her by saying so.

  ‘I’ll be late tonight,’ I say, as we join the traffic at the roundabout. ‘I’ve got a rehearsal.’

  ‘Are you really doing the play?’ Georgie looks up from her phone.

  ‘Yes. With Miss Palmer. I’m dreading it.’

  ‘I’m not surprised with Peppa Pig in it.’

  Peppa Pig is what Georgie and her cronies call Pippa Parsons, the girl who has the main part of Audrey. Pippa is in Year 11, a tall blonde with an impressive singing voice and, yes, a rather porcine nose. She’s always wheeled out to sing at prize-giving and carol services. Maybe this is why Georgie dislikes her.

  ‘I don’t know who you mean,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, you do.’

  ‘Anyway, you can go to Tash’s if you like.’

  ‘Tash is in it. She’s in the chorus.’

  ‘Stay and watch the rehearsal then.’

  ‘No, you’re all right. I’ll collect Herbert and go home.’

  ‘I don’t want you walking back from Andy’s in the dark.’

  ‘Doggy Day Care, you mean,’ Georgie always says this in a sing-song American accent. ‘It’s only ten minutes away. Along the main road.’

  ‘Fine. Keep to the main road and don’t put your headphones in. You need to hear if cars are coming.’

  ‘OK, OK. Chill out, Mum.’

  ‘You can have someone round if you want.’

  ‘Mum, are you feeling OK? You never want me to have anyone round “on a school night”.’ She puts the phrase in ironical aural quotation marks.

  ‘I just thought you might want some company. You might get trick-or-treaters round.’

  ‘I’ll tell them “trick”. That’ll fix them.’

  ‘There are some sweets in the tin with the London bus on it.’

  ‘That’s OK, Mum. I can cope with a few kids dressed up as witches. I’ll have Herbert to keep me company. And you won’t be late, will you?’

  ‘No, I won’t be late,’ I say.

  We drive in silence the rest of the way.

  You don’t know me. I think about those words intermittently all day long. Luckily it’s another manic one. Ella’s classes are playing up for poor old Don and twice I have to ‘pop in’ to glare at people and restore order. I’m also grappling with the masses of GCSE data. I had always felt a bit miffed that Ella got Key Stage 4 while I was stuck with Key Stage 3 but, honestly, the amount of data checking that’s required is driving me mad. It doesn’t help that the government seems to change the GCSE specifications every few seconds. Their latest wheeze is to mark English and maths 1 to 9 instead of A* to E. ‘This means I’ll never get an A in English, Mum,’ said Georgie, with mock sadness when she found out. I didn’t let on that I’d shed actual tears over this fact.

  The rehearsal starts at five, to give students the chance to go home if they want to. It also gives me an opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to do since the trip to Cambridge.

  R.M. Holland’s attic study has been left virtually unchanged since the day he died. It’s kept locked but, as a senior teacher and the resident Holland expert, I have the key. I want to go up there after school finishes and have a look around. I’ve been there before, of course. We even give tours sometimes. But this time I want to have a proper look at the photographs. There are loads of them framed on the wall or mounted in silver on the desk. What if Mariana is in one of them? I’ll take pictures on my phone and examine them when I get home. In my head, I imagine ringing Henry Hamilton, ‘I’ve made a rather interesting discovery.’

  After my last class, I walk quickly along the ground floor of the Old Building. It’s usually quiet here after school, as most of the students stick to the New Building, where all the form rooms are. But today there are a few teenage witches and vampires hanging about, hoping to give some poor teacher a fright. In the light of Ella’s death, Tony has banned any official Halloween activity (in previous years we’ve had non-uniform days or even, once, a ball) but the students are still over-excited and liab
le to be even sillier than normal.

  ‘What are you lot doing here?’ I say to the witches and vampires. ‘Have you got after-school clubs?’

  ‘No, miss,’ says a giggling witch in a Harry Potter cape. Ashley Something. I taught her in Year 7.

  ‘Well, go home then. Go and do some trick-or-treating.’

  ‘Trick-or-treating’s for kids,’ says a deep-voiced vampire. Patrick O’Leary: Year 11, rugby player, trouble.

  ‘Go and do your homework then. Try reading some set texts, Patrick. That might help in the mocks, you know.’

  He laughs and ambles off, the others following him. I watch them until they go out through the front door and then I take the stairs to the first floor.

  This floor is out-of-bounds after school but it’s not unheard of for students to sneak up here. Today, though, it’s quiet. In fact, it seems as if all the door-crashing, floorboard-thumping, football-pitch-shouting noises of the school have vanished altogether. There’s a preternatural silence as I walk along. There’s carpet here, unlike the parquet on the ground floor and the ghastly lino in the New Building. It’s green, like moss, and it seems to cushion my footsteps. The doors are all shut and, like an exercise in perspective, the lines all point to the end of the corridor where the spiral staircase leads to R.M. Holland’s study. And here is one of the oddities of the house: apparently Holland’s wife Alice often used to go up to his office barefoot (naked, in some versions of the story) and, after she died, Holland had a special carpet made with the imprint of her feet on it. It’s almost impossible to climb the stairs without putting your feet in those ghostly imprints. I’ve noticed before that they are just my size.

  I pause at the foot of the stairs. Silence, somehow more oppressive than ever, swells around me. I reach for my phone, hoping for some comfortingly twenty-first-century chirrups, but I’ve left it in my office. Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself, you’re in the school, you’re a teacher, what could happen to you? I start to climb the stairs, placing my booted feet where Alice Avery once walked.

  The door opens easily. In front of me is Holland’s desk, his books on the shelves, his photographs on the walls. And, behind the desk, Roland Montgomery Holland himself, his arms outstretched in welcome.

  Are you cold? The wind is getting up, isn’t it? See how the snow hammers a fusillade against the windows. Ah, the train has stopped again. I very much doubt if we’ll get farther tonight.

  Some brandy? Do share my travelling rug. I always prepare myself for the worst on these journeys. A good maxim for life, young man. Always prepare yourself for the worst.

  So, where was I? Ah yes. So Gudgeon and I, together with a third fellow — let’s call him Wilberforce — approached the house. Three established members of the Hell Club provided us with blindfolds. They were masked, of course, but we knew some of them by their voices. There was Lord Bastian and his henchman, Collins. The third had a foreign accent, possibly Arabian.

  Wilberforce was the first to don his blindfold. He set off, holding his candle and a box of matches, stumbling like a blind man towards the ruined house. We waited and we waited. The winter wind roared around us. Like this one, yes. We waited and, after what seemed a lifetime, we saw a candle flickering in the window embrasure. Very faintly, on the night air, we heard, ‘Hell is empty!’

  We cheered and our voices echoed against stone and silence. Bastian handed a candle to Gudgeon, together with a box of matches. Slowly Gudgeon removed his glasses and pulled the blindfold over his eyes.

  ‘Good luck,’ I said.

  He smiled. Funny, I remember it now. He smiled and made a strange gesture with his hands, splaying them out like a shopkeeper advertising his wares. I can see it as clearly as if he were standing in front of me. Lord Bastian gave him a push and Gudgeon too staggered off over the frosty grass.

  We waited and we waited and we waited. A night bird called. I heard somebody cough and someone else smother a laugh. I was breathing hard though I scarcely knew why.

  We waited and, eventually, a candle shone in the window. ‘Hell is empty!’ Our answering cheers rang out.

  Now it was my turn. I was handed the candle and matches. Then I pulled on the blindfold. Immediately the night seemed not just darker, but colder, more hostile. I didn’t need Bastian’s push to start me on my journey. I was anxious for it to be over. Yet, how long that walk seemed when you couldn’t see. I became convinced that I was heading in the wrong direction, that I had missed the ruined house altogether, but then I heard Bastian’s voice behind me, ‘Straight ahead, you fool!’ Stretching my hands out in front of me, I stumbled forwards.

  My hands hit stone. I was at the house. Feeling my way along the façade I eventually reached a void. The doorway. I tripped over the doorstep, landing heavily on flagstones, but at least I was in the building. Inside, the wind was less, but the cold, if anything, more. And the silence! It echoed and re-echoed around me, seeming to weigh down on me, to press me close to the earth. I knew that I was bending almost double, like a beggar under his sack. I could hear my breathing, jagged and stertorous. It was my only companion as I inched towards the staircase.

  How many steps? I had been told it was twenty but lost count after fifteen. Only when I stepped on a phantom stair did I realise that I was on the landing. I had thought that Gudgeon or Wilberforce might whisper a greeting but they were silent. Waiting. I edged forwards. I had to find the window and bring this pantomime to an end. My hands swept the plaster of the wall in front of me until . . . there! I found the wooden sill. I pulled off my blindfold and my cold fingers fumbled with a match to light the candle. Then I dripped some wax onto the sill and stood it upright.

  ‘Hell is empty!’ My voice sounded puny in my own ears. It was only then that I turned around and saw the dead bodies at my feet.

  Part the second

  Harbinder

  Chapter 9

  I disliked Clare Cassidy from the outset. She was too tall, for a start. Short dark hair, big eyes, long neck, legs that go on forever. The sort of woman who floats about in a dress that would be a tent on me. Even Neil was smitten. ‘She looks like a model,’ he said. ‘In a really shit magazine,’ he added, when he saw my face. He’s not a bad sort, Neil.

  That first day, when we drove into the school grounds, I knew that something was going on at Talgarth High. Didn’t surprise me for a minute, knowing that place.

  We sat in the car park in front of the Old Building. ‘I just want to see it again,’ I’d said to Neil. It was half-term so I thought it would be empty but I’d forgotten they do adult education classes there now. I saw people going in through the main doors carrying folders and art equipment. You wouldn’t catch me doing schoolwork in my time off but there’s no accounting for tastes.

  ‘I still can’t believe you came here,’ said Neil.

  ‘Well, I did,’ I said. ‘There’s even a Harbinder Kaur wing.’

  ‘Really?’

  It’s too easy with Neil. It really is.

  ‘No, of course not. I barely got a handshake when I left. Here are your GCSE certificates. Now piss off.’

  ‘But you went to uni.’ Neil seemed pathetically anxious to prove that I wasn’t an academic failure.

  ‘Chichester. That hardly counts. I lived at home too.’ That was my parents’ proviso. I could go to university as long as I stayed at home and didn’t do any of the things that students are meant to do: drink, do drugs, have sex. Didn’t stop me doing them, of course, but it did mostly stop me enjoying them.

  I stared up at the steps, the double doors, the rows of windows. There was more ivy than I remembered, red and green like a Christmas card. My mum used to say how beautiful this part of the school was (‘like a private school, like Roedean’) but there were still too many memories for me to see it clearly.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ said Neil, after a few minutes. ‘We should be back at the station talking to Ella’s
parents.’

  ‘I just want to imagine Ella here,’ I said. ‘Just for a minute. Indulge me.’ I looked up at the windows one more time and saw someone looking down at me. White face, dark eyes.

  Clare Cassidy.

  I got the call at ten o’clock on Sunday night. Neighbours had heard sounds of an altercation at Ella Elphick’s house in Shoreham. Uniform attended and found a woman, aged about forty, dead in the kitchen. She appeared to have multiple stab wounds.

  CSI were already there when I arrived. Blue lights flashing in the dark street, an awning erected over the front door. Ella Elphick lived in one of those cute cottages behind the church. I could just imagine what the neighbours were making of it all. I put on a paper suit and tucked my hair into a cap. I wanted to see the body before the place became too full of white suits, taking photographs, kneeling on the floor to take samples of dust, calculating the arc of blood stains. I wanted a chance to see the scene as it was.

  The small kitchen was already pretty full. One of the uniforms was there, pressed up against the back door, looking queasy, while a team of CSI crouched over the body. Ella was lying full length. It was one of those galley-type kitchens (quite nice; shiny white units, dark blue tiles) and she took up almost all of the floor space. Her hands were at her sides as if she’d been posed that way and there were cut marks on them, deep gashes on each palm. There was blood everywhere — on her chest, in her hair, on the shiny kitchen units. I couldn’t see her neck because of a CSI officer that was bent over her, but, from the colour of the blood, it looked like she had been stabbed in the throat. I looked at her feet. I once heard an actress say that when she was creating a character, she started with the feet. I would never say anything so wanky but I do always notice shoes. Ella was wearing pink converse.