The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery

by Sarah Rayne

  The chimes of a small mantel clock broke into his concentration, and he realized with vague surprise that it was two o’clock and that he was hungry. He had told Luisa that he would happily sort out his own lunch, and he closed his notebook and went along to the kitchen. After he had eaten he would ask if there had been any word about the fallen tree. In the meantime, he put together a sandwich which he ate at the kitchen table, his mind still filled with a kaleidoscopic blur of poetry and music and brutality – and of that haunting image of the Palestrina Choir humbly offering its music to the Kaiser’s soldiers.

  He washed up his plate and knife, and made a cup of instant coffee, which he took back to the library. There was still no sign of Luisa, and as he drank his coffee, he reread the letter to Sister Clothilde which referred to the Choir being always hidden behind screens. This was an intriguing byway for research, and Michael began to scan the shelves to see what other sources might be on hand. After a prolonged search during which he dispossessed several indignant spiders of their homes, he eventually found a battered volume on baroque choral music. It had been printed in 1910, the cover was dry and split, and the pages were badly foxed and infused with a dry musty scent of age. But halfway through he found a section that read:

  In Vivaldi’s day, many young girls were secluded from the world in conventual setting, not because they had a vocation, but so they could be trained to sing. Some embraced this training willingly, but there are many recorded instances of girls being taken from their homes by subterfuge or even force if it was thought they would be valuable additions to religious music. It was also common for wealthy families to pay religious institutions to house girls who were disfigured or mentally flawed, so that their existence need never be known.

  Others came from poor backgrounds, where disfiguring diseases were rife – often due to syphilis. For those unfortunates, the convents would have been a sanctuary where they were housed and fed.

  For most of their lives, these girls were hidden away. During performances and choral mass they remained behind screens – ostensibly in accordance with the Catholic tenets of preserving virginity and purity, but in reality to hide the disfigurements and, in some cases, the identities.

  This practice gradually died out as medical science advanced and attitudes towards cripples and the mentally deficient became more tolerant. However, traces of the tradition lingered in remote districts – in Spain, in France, in Belgium, and also in Italy, although the suggestion of ‘hidden-away choirs’ inside the Vatican cannot be substantiated. There is, however, strong evidence to suggest the practice continued in Europe until as recently as the late 1850s.

  Michael read this twice and found it distressing and infuriating in equal measures.

  It ought not to be a particular surprise to hear that girls had been hidden away like that – not shamefully or squalidly in asylums or workhouses, but in religious houses which people would have seen as respectable and even admirable.

  Had Leonora gone willingly into Sacré-Coeur? The journal gave no clue; it ended with Iskander and Leonora leaving the convent. Michael considered this. How had Iskander’s journal – or what appeared to be part of his journal – reached this house? If Iskander had been here – or if someone had acquired his belongings and brought them here – might there be other pages still to be found? This was a seductive possibility, but Michael was here to research war poets and the influence of music on their poetry, not to chase the lively outpourings of a disreputable Russian war journalist and burglar.

  He worked determinedly for two hours, exploring other boxes of papers, reading ancient letters, opening aged books, some of them privately printed by forgotten residents of the house, and sorting the contents of several desk drawers. Most of these yielded nothing more illuminating than old seed catalogues or faded notices of local events, but there were two or three more letters from Chuffy, who had apparently held the Gilmore family in some affection, and had written to his old Charterhouse school friend chronicling events such as a local cricket match in which Chuffy had distinguished himself – ‘I notched up fifty which I thought was a pretty good show’; the wedding of Chuffy’s sister to a local squire – ‘Frightfully good chap, I should think it’ll do pretty well, and a cartload of cousins turned up for the wedding bash’; and details of a number of Old Carthusian get-togethers, which Chuffy, a diligent attendee, described for the edification of his old chum, listing such names as might be thought of interest to Boots.

  … and Robert Graves put in an appearance this time, my word, he looked so much older, but I dare say we all look older, what with the war and all, even those of us who were too young to actually serve. Graves came up to me, friendly as you like, really decent chap. We talked about your cousin Stephen, of course. Graves remembered him, in fact had heard one or two of the stories about Stephen, well, I dare say most of us heard one or two of the stories, but I always thought they were all rot, and I said so. Graves said, ‘Ah, really? I’m very glad to have that assurance,’ and shook my hand, and we had a drink together, well, actually, we had several. I don’t mind telling you I should like to have asked him about the Somme, but I thought it better not to, because one never knows if those chaps want to talk about what they did and saw, and I know Graves was shelled. But he and I sat together for the concert, and I noticed how moved he was by some of the pieces the Choir sang. Some Italian stuff, so I believe – Palestrina or some such name. I’d never heard tell of it, but Graves seemed to know it – learned cove he is – and said the Choir had performed it beautifully. He said it was enough to make you want to go off and write screeds of verse in the same rhythm and pattern.

  Oh, Chuffy, thought Michael in delight, whoever you were, you’re giving me gold nuggets, and if I can find out your real name, you shall have an acknowledgement in the Director’s book. He scribbled down the details of Chuffy’s letter, then looked for a date or an address, only to find that Chuffy had provided neither on any of his letters, presumably thinking that Boots knew the date and also knew where he, Chuffy, lived anyway.

  What looked to be a slightly later letter referred to another concert – the organizer of the Old Carthusians during Chuffy’s era appeared to have a considerable affinity for music – at which there had been a specially-written piece set to the words of Rupert Brooke’s famous poem, The Soldier. This time Michael cursed Chuffy for not providing dates and supposed it must have been some kind of anniversary – perhaps it had been the ten year anniversary of the Armistice.

  Chuffy, it appeared, had not gone much for the music written for The Soldier – ‘awfully modern stuff, I thought it’ – but had found himself moved by the words and did not mind admitting it. ‘All that stuff about some corner of a foreign field being forever England, and hearts at peace under an English heaven. Dashed affecting, when you remember how many of those chaps we knew who died over there.’

  Michael assembled all of this on to the laptop, with particular attention to Chuffy’s account of the school reunions and a reminder to himself to write to the Old Carthusian Association in the hope that they kept records. Typing it all on to the laptop he again regretted the lack of an Internet connection here, but he would be able to let the Director have the notes in the next day or so.

  It was half-past four. He took his coffee cup back to the kitchen. Rain beat against the windows and sluiced down gutters and drains, and Michael stood looking out, thinking that Fosse House seemed to lie at the centre of an incessant downpour. He was just rinsing the cup when he realized there were other patterns inside the sound of the rain. Footsteps. Was Stephen out there again? The footsteps faded, and Michael hesitated, then thought he would open the little garden door at the far end of the kitchen and reassure himself that no one was out there.

  The door was locked but the key was in the lock, and he turned it and opened the door. Rain blew into his face, and he shivered, but took a few steps out. The gardens were grey-green in the dull light, and it was like peering through a bead cu
rtain. For a moment he thought a blurred figure darted between the thin grey layers, then it was gone, and he could see the walled garden with the wrought-iron gate. The gate was closed. There’s no one there, he thought with relief, and went back inside, closing and locking the door. The rain had left faint marks across the kitchen floor. Michael looked for a cloth and not finding one hoped they would dry out by themselves.

  He went back to the library, hoping for some sound that would indicate Luisa’s whereabouts so that he could talk to her about the Choir, annoyed to find himself hesitant to knock on doors. But there were no sounds anywhere. Perhaps his hostess had a brief sleep in the afternoons. Madeline Usher encoffined in the ancient keep, the lid screwed down, but the beating of her heart still discernible …? ‘For pity’s sake,’ said Michael angrily to himself, ‘if Luisa’s asleep, it’s because she’s nodded off over a good book!’

  The library felt so chilly that he went upstairs to collect an extra sweater from his bedroom. The stairs and landing were wreathed in gloom, and he looked for a light switch, but could not see one. His room was only a few yards away, however, and he went towards it, glancing to the far corner where the Holzminden sketch hung.

  The sketch was wreathed in shadows, but standing next to it was the figure of a man in an army greatcoat.

  Stephen.

  Ten

  Stephen seemed to be staring into a distant and terrible horizon. He’s looking into a nightmare, thought Michael in horrified fascination. No, that’s wrong, he’s trying to stare beyond a nightmare, because the nightmare is too dreadful to look at. But he’s not real, I must remember that. He’s nothing more than an image from the past.

  The collar of Stephen’s greatcoat was turned up as if against a cold wind, and the soft blond hair was tumbled. For the first time Michael saw that his hands were torn and bruised, the nails shredded, the fingertips bloodied. Stephen, he thought, your hands, your poor hands … What did that to you?

  Stephen turned his head and looked directly at Michael, and a half-recognition seemed to show in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t let them find me …’

  Michael had no idea if the words were actually spoken, or if he was hearing them with his mind, but Stephen was so young, so vulnerable, that he stopped being afraid and took a step forward, one hand held out. He thought Stephen had just made up his mind to accept his approach, but then light, uneven footsteps came up the stairs, and he turned sharply to see Luisa. She must have crossed the hall without him hearing and she was standing at the head of the stairs, one hand resting on the banister, her eyes on the shadowy figure. But when Michael looked back, Stephen had gone, and there was only a faint outline on the panelling, like a thin chalk mark.

  In a dry, ragged voice, Luisa said, ‘You saw him, didn’t you.’

  It was impossible to pretend not to understand. Choosing his words carefully, Michael said, ‘I thought there was something – someone – here. But it was probably just a shadow—’

  ‘It wasn’t a shadow,’ she said at once. ‘It was Stephen. That means you let him in.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘You must have done,’ she said. ‘He can’t come in unless someone opens a door or a window for him. His hands are so damaged you see – he can’t turn a handle or a window catch himself. It was a long time before I understood that.’

  Michael stared at her, and his mind went back to how he had heard the rain tapping against the kitchen windows, and how the rhythms had formed into soft words. ‘Let-me-in …’ He had heard that, and he had opened the kitchen door to make sure no one was out there. There had not been anyone – but a shadow had seemed to slip between the veils of rain, and there had been faint wet marks like footprints across the kitchen floor … I did let him in, thought Michael, with an uneasy glance towards the corner with the Holzminden sketch.

  Very gently, he said, ‘Miss Gilmore, supposing I did glimpse something or hear something or – or even open a door to look outside for a moment? It doesn’t matter so very much, does it? Old houses often have lingering memories, and occasionally the memories can even be visual. I’ve encountered it before. Not everyone accepts the premise, but—’

  ‘“All argument is against it, but all belief is for it”?’ she said. ‘Who was it who said that?’

  ‘Dr Johnson.’

  She smiled slightly. ‘I thought you’d know.’ If there had been any fear in her eyes earlier it was no longer there.

  Michael said, ‘I think that some people are more receptive to – to picking up traces of the past than others. Perhaps you’re one of the receptive kind.’

  ‘I wish it were that simple,’ she said, then looked at him with an odd, sideways glance. ‘Dr Flint, nearly a hundred years ago, towards the end of the Great War, my ancestor Stephen Gilmore was incarcerated in a German prisoner-of-war camp. A place called Holzminden.’

  She did not seem to notice Michael’s start of surprise, so he said, ‘Were his hands damaged in Holzminden?’

  ‘I don’t know. But on some nights his hands still bleed.’ A deep sadness touched her face, then she said, ‘I think Holzminden damaged his mind, though. Perhaps he became a little mad because of it. I’ve sometimes felt—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve sometimes felt that his madness became stamped on this house,’ she said. Her eyes narrowed, darting from side to side as if searching for something, and Michael felt a prickle of unease.

  ‘Whatever happened to Stephen can’t possibly affect you now, Miss Gilmore—’

  ‘Dr Flint, why do you think I live here like this!’ she said, angrily. ‘Solitary, secluded. Shut away from the world. Why do you think I couldn’t offer you the common courtesy of asking you to stay here for your research? Here, in a house with so many empty bedrooms. And why do you suppose I was so fearful when the storm forced my hand last night?’

  There was an abrupt silence. Then Michael said, very softly, ‘Because Stephen comes here every night.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. He tries to get in, but his poor hands— And there are some nights—’

  She broke off, and Michael said, very gently, ‘There are some nights when you let him in?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, staring up at him. Her hands flexed in an odd gesture, as if she was clasping another, invisible, hand. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this,’ she said. ‘I’ve never told anyone before. But you saw him. You heard him. So perhaps you understand, just a little.’

  Do I tell her she seemed to have sleepwalked last night? thought Michael. That I saw her open the door? He said, carefully, ‘Do you see him every night?’

  ‘Almost every night. Since I was a young girl growing up here. When I was a little older – when I understood better – I realized that no one must ever be in this house once darkness falls, because no one must know about Stephen. If he’s real – if he’s still here, I have to protect him. I have to protect people who come to this house, as well.’

  ‘From whatever – or whoever – came for Stephen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if Stephen’s not real?’

  ‘Dr Flint, we both know what happens to people who see and hear things that aren’t there,’ she said impatiently.

  Trying for a more normal note, Michael said, ‘But you haven’t been entirely alone all this time, surely?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Luisa. ‘My life hasn’t been completely solitary. It certainly hasn’t been without purpose or interest. There are people in the village – occasional social events. And there are people I correspond with – there are a great many of those. Researchers into the Choir in particular – that began many years ago, and it’s brought me a good deal of pleasure and interest. Your Director of Music is one of those researchers, of course.’

  ‘What about your family? Friends?’

  ‘I had no brothers or sisters,’ said Luisa. ‘As a child I was alone a good deal.’ A shadow of some strong emotion passed over her face, but it vanished before Michael could identify it
. ‘In any case, I could never put into words what I heard and saw.’ She paused, then in a low voice said, ‘Sometimes, I think I am mad as well – that I’ve been infected with Stephen’s madness. Can you catch insanity?’

  ‘Of course not. And let’s remember that I’ve seen Stephen, too.’

  ‘Yes. Dr Flint – Michael – I think I shall always be deeply grateful to you for that.’ Then, as abruptly as if a curtain had been drawn, the cool, grande dame persona returned. ‘I came to tell you that I took a phone call a short time ago,’ she said. ‘The tree is still blocking the roads. I’m afraid it means you’ll have to spend another night inside Fosse House.’

  Email from: Owen Bracegirdle

  To: Nell West

  Hi Nell –

  Thanks for your message earlier.

  Of course I’ll come with you to the Bodleian, and we’ll caper through the catalogues and disrupt the staff in quest of your privately-printed letters. I can’t imagine why you’re chasing letters from a POW officer from the Great War, but you can tell me the spicy details over coffee.

  Light has been restored to College after Wilberforce’s foray into the bewilderment of Oriel’s electricity. That means I’ve been able to send a more seemly report to the Director of Music on my work for his opus, rather than a scrawl on a couple of spare sheets of A4. I hope he takes due note of the lateness of the hour I sent it, because it doesn’t hurt to let the ivory tower gang realize that lesser mortals work quite hard.

  I’m sorry to report, though, that while everyone was searching for Homer’s lamp for illumination, or, at worst, a few candles or a cigarette lighter, Wilberforce appears to have padded through the Gothic darkness to Oriel’s kitchens. He reached them unerringly, of course – that cat could find a scullery in a stormy night without a compass – and made a quiet and efficient assault on the abandoned lamb casserole. To be fair, the casserole had already been designated as uneatable, due to being only half-cooked, and I suppose Wilberforce couldn’t be expected to understand about the dangers of imperfectly-cooked lamb.