by Anita Frank
‘Lady Brightwell is happy for me to do whatever is necessary to disprove the fanciful notions flying about,’ Mr Sheers assured me, watching the girl spread the flour with a broad sweep of her hand. ‘Don’t leave any gaps now, Maisie,’ he called up, resting on the newel post.
‘I confess, I’m intrigued, Mr Sheers. What is the purpose of all this?’
‘Ghosts don’t leave footprints, Miss Marcham, mischievous maids do. I have a feeling this flour might have a restful influence on Greyswick’s marauding spirit.’ He had the audacity to wink as he listed my way. ‘I suspect we will all sleep soundly tonight.’
He was wrong.
The sound, all too familiar now, ripped me from my sleep. I stiffened. There it was again – weeping. I flung back the sheets, my drowsiness banished as I scrambled from my bed. Pulling down my rucked-up nightdress, I hurried across the room, gathering up my wrapper on the way.
The thrill of vindication was not enough to keep my trepidation at bay as I stepped out onto the dimly lit landing. I heard it again: crying – snuffling, whimpering, crying. With trembling hands, I pulled on my gown, yanking the satin sash tight about my waist. My heart beat so strongly I was certain the vibration must be visible through the flimsy material.
Mr Sheers stood, still fully dressed, at the bottom of the nursery staircase, its flour dressing a blanket of grimy snow in the wan moonlight. He shot me a look as I approached. The night’s dark growth of stubble contrasted starkly with his drained cheeks.
‘You hear it?’ I asked.
‘I do.’
‘Is it your imagination, Mr Sheers?’
‘I’ve switched on the gramophone, so we’ll know soon enough.’
I looked down at the wheeling disc on the contraption at my feet. ‘You don’t need that to tell you the truth.’
‘Suggestion is a powerful thing, Miss Marcham.’
He opened his mouth to continue, but a new sound punctuated those heartbreaking sobs, staunching his words. Familiar creaking now cleaved the frigid air with its grim repetitive rhythm.
‘Stay here,’ Sheers instructed.
He grabbed the newel post and swung himself up onto the first step, causing the flour to drift. I had no intention of letting him investigate alone. I wanted to see things for myself, not be subject to his biased reporting, but when I announced my intention he told me in no uncertain terms to stay where I was. With an air of defiance, I took the first step, silently daring him to stop me. He muttered an expletive under his breath.
‘Mind the bloody flour then,’ he cursed as he hauled himself onto the next tread.
My palm was slick on the banister. I was careful to tread only in the brown lakes left by his shoes as they disturbed the flour. The comforting moonlight from the arched window below dissipated with each upward step, until we were enveloped in darkness on the galleried landing. The nursery stood before us.
The sobbing drifting out from under the closed door began to quieten, but the rocking cradle maintained the slow, hypnotic tempo of a metronome keeping time. The soft hairs on the back of my arms had risen like hackles, and I was sure Sheers could hear my heart thudding against my chest – I fancied I could hear his.
I stifled a shriek as the servants’ door began to rattle. I recognised the outline caught in the golden smear behind the frosted glass.
‘It’s Annie, she can’t get out.’
‘The door’s been locked,’ Sheers hissed, ‘to minimise activity.’
‘Unlock it.’
He looked at me in disbelief. The sobbing had ceased now, but the creaking persisted. The air was harsh with rimy chill, and I was beginning to shiver, my bare feet, dusted with flour, aching from the icy boards. My growing discomfort fired my irritation.
‘For God’s sake, Mr Sheers, look at your precious flour. Except for our footsteps it’s untouched. Unless Annie can levitate, she can’t have interfered with anything up here. Let her out!’
Airing his frustration with a few choice words, he stalked over to the glazed door, pulling a key from his trouser pocket. He struggled to find the lock in the gloom, but the key eventually slid home and Annie slipped past him, bright ginger hair trailing down her back in a corrugated sheet. She frowned as she noticed the powdery carpet, but there were more extraordinary events for her to worry about, and she wisely passed no comment.
We clustered in heightened expectation. Gentle crying began again. Only our laboured breaths and the insidious sounds seeping from behind the nursery door pierced the frigid air. Sheers gripped the doorknob. He hesitated for a beat, then twisted it round.
The crying stopped as the door gaped open. A shaft of silver moonlight pierced the centre of the room, streaking in through the dormer window, spilling about the wooden cradle like a theatre spot. The cradle itself rocked gently, side to side, creaking with each list.
Sheers muttered another expletive, his muscles as strained as guy ropes pulling taut in a storm. Even Annie, always the epitome of tranquillity, appeared unnerved.
The cradle stopped.
Nobody moved. None of us spoke. The air became thick.
Annie jerked by my side. Her eyes flared with panic, her mouth opening and closing in a futile attempt to speak. I called out her name in horror as guttural noises escaped her throat, her hands struggling about her face, wiping, pushing and clawing as she fought against an unseen foe.
‘Dear God, Annie! What is it? What can I do?’ I lurched to catch her as she collapsed to her knees, the blood draining from her cheeks, her eyes sliding frantically, her narrow chest heaving in desperation. ‘For God’s sake, help me!’ I implored Sheers who stood beside me, ashen but alert. ‘Do something!’ But he shook his head. In that split second I identified the flint in his expression: suspicion.
I grabbed her shoulders as her eyes rolled backwards, the bags underneath them so devoid of colour I could distinguish the tiny thread veins laced within them, turning purple as I watched. Her hands slowed their struggle and dropped to her sides, folding against the floor.
‘Lay her down,’ Sheers instructed, urgent now and courting a degree of concern.
Annie’s lifeless body flopped back onto the floorboards. Her eyes rolled again. She wheezed for air. I had seen seizures in France, but I knew whatever was happening to Annie had no medical explanation. As I looked on in horror at her blue tinged features, an unwelcome thought forced its way into my mind: she looked as if she was being suffocated.
They show me things, each in their own way, so I can understand what they’ve seen …
I thought of her hands swiping about her face, desperate to free herself of something. The rocking cradle that rocked no more. The dead baby – it’s blue. The dead baby in the cradle. Hands pushing. Straining. Unable to breathe. Clarity shot through me like an electric charge: smothered.
For a moment I was paralysed. I gaped, shocked by the gruesomeness of it all, my mind labouring to process such inconceivable evil.
‘No … it can’t be true …’ The hoarse plea fell from dry lips, but as I looked down on Annie’s starved face, every vein in her cheeks now a streak of fading blue, I knew I was right – and it was my only hope to save her.
‘I understand.’ The words emerged as a faint croak. ‘I understand,’ I said with more force, addressing the charged air around me. ‘Let her go.’
Nothing happened. Annie’s chest was still. She was giving up the fight, surrendering to the terrifying force dominating the room. I swallowed back my mounting terror and tried once more.
‘The baby was smothered – I understand. Please let her go!’
Annie’s body arched upwards with such violence I was thrown back. An excruciating wheeze raked her lungs. She coughed and gasped, her eyes dark and bulging, her hands scrabbling at her sides, her fingernails raking the floorboards, scuffing at the varnish, until at last the blood vessels in her cheeks began to recede and a pink flush coloured her stricken features. She lay on the floor, panting, weak as a new-born kitten.
‘Say it’s not true …’ I begged as I cradled her head in my lap, stroking her hair, eager for her to deny it all – yearning for her to do so. Solemn eyes met mine; her very silence tore at my soul.
The door slammed shut. I started – and so, I noticed, did Sheers, but I was too preoccupied with the shocking truth to find any dry humour in his skittishness. I twisted round to look up at him, anger flaring in my chest.
‘Well? Are you satisfied yet?’
He didn’t answer. He limped to the door and flicked a switch. Moonlight and shadows were swallowed by the luminescence of the single bulb strung above us.
‘It was quite a show,’ he said.
‘A show? My God, you saw her, she nearly died.’
He folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘I have seen mediums collapse to the floor convulsing, appearing to spew up ectoplasm – mere parlour tricks designed to fool the gullible with little more than spittle and cheesecloth.’ He shrugged his shoulders and pulled a dismissive moue. ‘She held her breath very convincingly, I’ll give her that, and you managed to draw some very creative conclusions, but yes, a show all the same.’
‘This is ridiculous.’ I helped Annie to her feet. She wobbled, and I slipped a supportive arm around her back before confronting him. ‘What of the rocking cradle?’ I demanded. ‘What of the crying? Really, Mr Sheers, what exactly will it take to convince you?’
He grinned, a spontaneous boyish grin that vanished with such speed I might have imagined it. He crossed to the cradle and began bouncing on the floorboards. The cradle did not move.
‘I’m sure there is a logical reason for all of it, Miss Marcham. I will have to see whether the crying recorded. In answer to your question, that might be enough evidence to satisfy me.’ He stopped testing the floor. ‘But so far, I remain unconvinced.’ He crossed the room, clearly intending to leave. He addressed me for a final time. ‘If you want my honest opinion and some free advice, get rid of that light-fingered little actress and I think you’ll find this nonsense will soon come to an end.’
He pulled the door wide open and stopped dead.
‘Mr Sheers?’
When he failed to respond, Annie and I drew forward, until the three of us crowded the doorway, looking out onto the landing.
There, muddled amongst the tracks and scuffs of our own feet, were the perfectly preserved footprints of a small child.
Chapter Forty
I cleared my throat. ‘I think Annie will accept that apology whenever you are ready, Mr Sheers.’
‘What the hell …?’
I didn’t attempt to answer him. I squatted down and touched the first imprint. It was perfect – the scoop of the heel, the bend of the foot, the tiny toes.
‘Where’s your camera?’ I asked.
‘I left it on the landing. I’ll go down and get it, take some pictures while these are still fresh.’ He couldn’t hide his bewilderment. Like a blind man who could suddenly see, the world around him took on new meaning, as he was blessed with a clarity he had never dreamt of.
‘I’ll fetch it for you,’ I offered, the thought of his torturous journey down and back again too much to bear.
He nodded his thanks, distracted as he struggled to comprehend the enormity of those small footprints.
‘This can’t be. There must be a child – a live child – in this house.’
‘There isn’t, Mr Sheers.’
‘Ghosts don’t leave footprints!’ He immediately regretted his raised voice, his loss of self-control. His eyes darted about, desperate to avoid the terrifying proof, but in the end, they were drawn downwards, unable to resist the evidence before them. ‘Are you trying to tell me it’s all real? The crying? The cradle?’
‘Well, it would appear so.’
‘Then why does no one else in this house experience anything?’
I started down the stairs, taking care with each step, so as to leave the precious prints intact.
‘Annie has a theory – that Lucien doesn’t choose to make himself known to them.’ I kept my voice light, not wanting to wake the slumbering household.
I could have done of course, and part of me wanted to – to hammer on their doors and demand they look upon the evidence of the little life lost but lingering. But tonight’s revelations had exposed a new dreadful twist in the tale, and I needed time to contemplate its significance.
Sheers apologised to Annie as I made my descent. I appreciated his humility – it was only right, after all. I found the camera waiting on the landing, already primed, the flash powder ready. I made quick work of my return, eager for the irrefutable evidence to be captured for posterity. Annie and I huddled in the nursery until he had finished. Agreeing no more could be done for the time being, we separated for what remained of the night.
Sheers and I, both of us stifling yawns, made our careful descent. Adrenalin was ebbing from my body now, and as the first rays of dawn tinged the sky a heathery pink, I realised how exhausted I was. Sheers must have been dead on his feet, for he’d been on watch the whole night. As I reached my room, I advised him to get some sleep.
‘Miss Marcham, is there anything else I should know? Anything you haven’t told me?’
‘I think you know everything I do, Mr Sheers, the question is surely how you choose to interpret it.’
‘But what you said in the nursery – do you realise the implications?’
‘Can you honestly ask me that? Don’t you think I know? This house is full of terrible secrets, Mr Sheers, secrets the dead are no longer content to let lie.’
A tortured breath escaped him as he rubbed at his temple. ‘So, we’re saying there is no doubt? This house is haunted?’
‘After tonight, after those inexplicable footprints, how can there be any denying it? This house is haunted, Mr Sheers. Now we must find out why.’
Despite being deprived of sleep, I woke at my usual time. I was keen to get on, so I washed and dressed without summoning Annie; I had looked after myself in France after all – the more I thought about it the more it struck me as absurd that I did not do so now.
I met Mr Sheers on the stairs, coming up as I was descending for breakfast. I knew at once something was very wrong. His dark eyes blazed, and his mouth formed a thin angry line within his freshly shaven face.
‘Have you seen the staircase? They’ve gone. Everything’s gone.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Sheers, you’ve lost me.’
‘The footprints.’ He hobbled up a step, close enough for me to detect the woody notes of his aftershave. ‘Mrs Henge swept them all away this morning.’
‘What? Why?’
‘She claims the flour was getting traipsed into the landing carpet and presuming it had served its purpose she cleared it away.’
‘But she must have seen Lucien’s prints.’
‘Apparently not.’
‘And she cleaned it up herself? Not one of the girls?’
‘Herself, she said.’
‘Now tell me that doesn’t strike you as suspicious,’ I retorted, appalled by the news. ‘But you still have the photographs?’
‘I do – if they come out. The conditions last night were hardly ideal. I’ve converted one of the storerooms downstairs into a darkroom – I was just on my way now to collect the film.’
‘And what of the recording?’
‘I’ve yet to listen to it.’
‘Well then, we must hope you have captured some evidence, one way or another.’
Mr Sheers promised to find me as soon as he had more news. I carried on to the dining room, deflated by the loss of the footprints. I had been reluctant to share them in the night, but in the cold light of day, I longed for the vindication they would have afforded. Instead I now found myself dwelling on Mrs Henge’s suspicious actions. The dining-room door was ajar as I reached it, and my hand was on the panel to push it open, when a hissed conversation stopped me in my tracks.
I held my breath and angled my ear closer to the draughty
gap. I snatched a quick glance up and down the corridor to ensure that I was quite alone and in no danger of being discovered, but the corridor was empty; the woman who inhabited its shadows was ensconced within the dining room – and she was not alone.
‘What was I supposed to do? They belonged to a child.’
‘Dear God … How is that possible? What devilry is this, Constance? What can it mean?’
‘I don’t know. I can make no sense of it, Ruth. We should have left this place a long time ago.’
‘I can never leave this house – you made sure of that.’
‘Would you have preferred the alternative? What I did was done for the best.’
‘Whose best?’ Wounding spite dripped from the companion’s tongue; even from behind my wooden shield I sensed the housekeeper’s flinch.
‘All of it comes back to her!’ Mrs Henge retaliated. ‘If she had just acted all those years ago—’
‘I will not see her punished for her part in it all, not by you nor by anyone else.’
Miss Scott’s vehemence pushed me from the fissure. Fearing detection, I backed away and retreated along the corridor on soft fleeting steps, having no desire to be caught listening at doors, once again learning secrets I did not have the wherewithal to understand.
Chapter Forty-One
I was deeply troubled by what I had heard, and I churned the conversation over in my mind. Of one thing I was becoming increasingly convinced: behind the crass grandeur and tasteless opulence, the walls of Greyswick were infused with so many secrets and lies that the very fabric of the building breathed deceit. Last night’s revelation had stunned me. There seemed no end to the horrors that had occurred within the auspices of this awful house, and I was more determined than ever to uncover the truth.
But how could I possibly hope for success when the crimes had been committed over a generation ago? I was faced by an overwhelming task, but I took some comfort from the fact that within this raging torrent that engulfed me there were nuggets of gold, occasionally catching the light through the swirling waters above. I felt certain that if I panned through enough grit and dirt, they would be left, gleaming, ready to reward me for my industry. And of course, I did have a very particular asset – I had Annie Burrows.
