The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘I’m setting off for Oxford tomorrow.’

  ‘Will you be able to? What if they haven’t cleared the tree by then?’

  ‘If I have to pass earth’s central line— If I have to cross the foaming flood, frozen by distance, I will be with you in Quire Court when night falls on the world.’

  ‘You do get carried away,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘The poets always say these romantic things better than I ever could.’

  ‘Don’t denigrate yourself. You’re the last of the real romantics as far as I’m concerned. Ring again if you want to. I wouldn’t mind if it was three in the morning when you rang.’

  The house felt immeasurably safer and saner after talking to Nell, but by ten o’clock Michael gave up the struggle to work. He took the key of the underground room from his pocket and looked at it for a long time.

  The prospect of going down to that room again was daunting, but Michael knew he would have to do it. I want you to be the one who knows the truth … He could dash across the room, snatch up the book, and be back up here within five minutes – ten at the most.

  Before he could change his mind he went into the kitchen to find an electric torch and matches. As an afterthought, he collected his mobile phone from his room and, thus suitably armed, unlocked the door in the panelling. It opened easily, and as it swung inwards, a faint drift of still-warm oil or paraffin came up, with, beneath it, something old and sad. Michael took a deep breath, switched on the torch, and went warily down the stone steps.

  The room looked exactly as he had left it. He righted the fallen chair, then shone the torch around. It was not so bad, after all. It was not somewhere he would choose to work, but Luisa had lived here all her life, and perhaps she had not minded the lingering ghosts.

  He picked up the thick, leather-bound book and jammed it into his pocket. If nothing else, it might contain names or phone numbers that would be useful to the hospital. Before he went back upstairs, he shone the torch on the oak chest in its corner. In the sharp torchlight, the scratches around the lock were more noticeable. From one angle they almost seemed to form the pattern of a snarling angry face – the kind of twisted, scowling, incredibly old face depicted as guardians of ancient tombs or long-buried malevolent secrets. Whatever it is, it’s nothing to do with me, thought Michael, but his feet had already taken him across the stones and he was bending down to pull the velvet aside almost before he realized it. There were several deep scratches on the edges of the domed lid as well. Madeline Usher, entombed alive, after all? Struggling to rend her coffin open, clawing at the lid …? ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ said Michael impatiently out loud, ‘someone lost the key, and the lid had to be levered off, that’s all.’ But the memory of Stephen Gilmore’s hands, raw and torn, flickered in his mind.

  A good many of us would like to know the truth about Stephen, Chuffy had written. And Stephen had been pronounced dead after seven years. That means they never found a body, thought Michael, still staring at the chest.

  It was nonsense, of course. The chest, if he bothered to force it open, would turn out to contain nothing more sinister than old photos or old newspaper cuttings. But why would Luisa keep them down here, inside an oak chest, bound with a thick chain and padlock? Why would anyone?

  The padlock looked fairly secure, but Michael grasped it to make sure. As he did so, something seemed to wrench at the shadows, as if tearing them aside, preparatory to stepping through them. Michael recoiled, his heart punching against his ribs. Hands, dreadful wounded hands, the nails splintered, the flesh raw, reached out from the darkness behind the chest, and he gasped and fell back on the stone floor, dropping the torch. It rolled into a corner, shattering the bulb, and darkness, thick and stifling, closed down.

  Michael got to his feet, frantically trying to get his bearings. Was Stephen still here? He groped blindly for the walls, willing the stairs to be within reach. He was just starting to make out vague shapes in the darkness and realizing that he had been going towards the desk instead of the stairs, when cold, dead fingers reached out and tried to curl round his hand.

  Michael’s nerve snapped, and he jerked back and scrambled across the room. By now he could make out the shape of the steps, and he was able to find his way up to the hall. He slammed the panelled door and leaned back against it, regaining his breath. Then he locked it, although his hands were shaking so badly he had to make two attempts, and at one level of his mind he was aware of the absurdity of trying to lock up a ghost. But he did it anyway, then he retreated to the library and slammed that door as well.

  What now? The prospect of remaining in the house all night filled him with dismay. Mightn’t it be better to leave at once and hope he could get to the village – or any village – with a pub and a spare room? He reached for the phone on the desk, found the card the helpful paramedic had provided, and dialled the local police number.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ said the voice at the other end, ‘but we haven’t shifted that tree at Fosse House yet. We’ve been too busy clearing the main road – it’s been a wild old storm. We should get it done first light tomorrow, though. If I were you, I’d stay put.’

  ‘How far along the road is the tree? From Fosse House, I mean?’

  ‘Smack across the road about ten yards from the gate,’ said the voice, lugubriously. ‘Blocking the road altogether.’

  ‘And how far is the village from the house? If I tried walking?’

  ‘Oh, you can’t do that,’ said the man at once. ‘It’s a good ten miles, and in this weather— Well, you’d be drenched to the skin inside of ten minutes, and likely suffer pneumonia. You stay put is my advice, sir. The men’ll be out there in the morning. But call us back if there are any problems. We’d get out to you if so. Motorbikes, you know. They can get round the tree all right.’ Michael briefly considered asking if he could be provided with a pillion ride to the village, but decided against it. He thanked the man and rang off, wondering if he could risk trying to reach the village on foot. But it would mean walking along the dark lonely drive, and then along the equally dark, lonely road beyond it. All ten miles of it.

  Leaving Fosse House did not seem to be an option, so Michael stopped thinking about it and instead contemplated the best way to pass the night. Should he seal himself in the library with crucifixes and garlic wreaths and all the panoply of the ghost-repellants of fiction, and wait for dawn which traditionally sent spirits fleeing? He had told Luisa that Stephen would not harm him, and he still believed that. But then he remembered again those dreadful hands reaching out of the shadows, and he no longer felt as sure.

  It was at this point in his thoughts that the phone rang, and Michael, his nerves still on edge, jumped all over again. He reached for it, hoping it might be the police station calling back to say the road was unexpectedly clear after all.

  But it was not. It was the hospital to which Luisa Gilmore had been taken. The ward sister he had spoken to earlier said she was extremely sorry to be giving him this bad news, but Miss Gilmore had died half an hour ago.

  ‘I’m afraid the damage to her heart was too severe. She had a second heart attack shortly after she got here. We tried all the usual methods to revive her, but we weren’t able to.’

  Michael had not expected to feel such an acute sense of loss. After a moment he said, ‘That’s so sad. I’m very sorry indeed. I didn’t know her very well, but—’

  ‘An unusual lady,’ said the sister.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have to focus on practicalities, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘We really do need to find next of kin or someone who has authority to – well, to act for her. To make arrangements.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can find an address book,’ said Michael. ‘Failing that, there must be someone local who will know.’

  ‘If you could ring us back as soon as possible,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  At first Michael thought he would phone Nell, and then he saw it was appr
oaching midnight, and she would probably be in bed. And despite what she had said, it was a bit late to phone, especially with sad news. He would try to find the information the hospital needed instead. It might even focus his mind and drive back the spooks to make a search for an address book.

  An address book … Or a diary?

  Somewhat reluctantly, he took from his pocket the journal he had picked up in the underground room. Luisa wanted me to read this, he thought. She wanted me to understand, and she said she trusted me. And on a practical level, it might contain addresses or phone numbers of family.

  But it still felt like the worst kind of intrusion, and it was some time before he could bring himself to open it. The pages were all handwritten, and as far as he could see the writing was all in the same hand. There did not appear to be any dates, and there certainly did not seem to be any names and addresses. He flattened it out on the desk, directly under the comforting light cast by the lamp.

  He had intended to do no more than glance at the first few pages, after which he was going to steel himself to go up to Luisa’s bedroom and look for a conventional address book. But the opening sentences of the diary acted like a magnet.

  ‘Today was a good day, because Leonora did not come …’

  It seemed to be a journal, pure and simple, and it did not look if it was likely to contain what Michael was looking for. Unless you counted Leonora.

  He turned a couple more of the pages.

  ‘Today I prayed for over an hour to keep Leonora at bay, but she came to me anyway … I wonder how much longer I can fight this … She feared the madness, and I fear it too …’

  Michael paused. Despite Luisa’s words, could he really read this? Wasn’t it too private?

  But she had said she wanted him to know.

  Thirteen

  Today was a good day because Leonora did not come. So this is the day I shall begin a diary, partly because it is 1950, the start of a new decade, but mostly because I feel so much stronger and happier when Leonora is not here.

  I shall record everything important that happens, and it will be a place where Leonora cannot come – it will be my world, safe, private, and I will be able to shut her out completely … Please, God, let me be able to do that.

  I don’t know yet what important things I will be writing. I know about diaries, though. My father has printed copies of diaries written by famous people – Samuel Pepys and John Aubrey – men who lived hundreds of years ago, but whose diaries are still read today. So perhaps someone in the future will read this and wonder about me, and think how interesting it is to know about life in the 1940s and 1950s. My diaries might even be displayed in museums, so that scholarly people like father will consult them. Or I might have children some day, and they will read them, although I can’t imagine where a husband to provide the children will come from, because I hardly ever go anywhere, except to church on Sundays, and we seldom have visitors in case it disturbs Father’s Great Work. Also, Mother says visitors mean a lot of work and she has quite enough to do as it is; a house of this size does not run itself, we should all remember that – I could do more to help, and it would not hurt father to tidy his desk occasionally, either.

  Because of Father’s Work I must never be noisy or go rampaging about the house. I never do. I don’t think I would know how to rampage, even if there were other children to rampage with, which there never have been.

  Michael turned the page. Apart from that mention of 1950, Luisa had not dated any of the entries, but she appeared to have started a fresh page for each new one, and it did not look as if she had written in it every day. There were large gaps on some of the pages, and the ink varied in colour and in quality. The writing varied as well, and so strongly that it almost looked as if another person had made some of the entries. This was such a worrying thought, however, that Michael refused to give it attention.

  Leonora was here today. I know she is trying to get into these pages, but I shall not let her, I shall not … I am stronger than she is, and as long as I remember that Leonora is a separate person, she cannot hurt me. It’s important to keep hold of that thought. I have started saying it to myself each night, after I’ve said my prayers. I say, I am not Leonora, I am not, over and over again. I think it is what father calls a Coué exercise of the mind. He tried to teach me about Émile Coué who believed in the power of the mind, but Mother said the concept was beyond someone of my age and Father was wasting his time – no fourteen-year-old could be expected to recite mind-exercises.

  I would recite the Devil’s scriptures every night if I thought it would keep Leonora away. No, I don’t mean that, of course I don’t.

  Leonora is trying her tricks to get into this diary, but I have learned how to cheat her. I know the times of the day when she tries to force her way into my head and lay her thoughts and memories over mine, smothering them so I can’t get at them. Early evening is the time she likes best – twilight – or sometimes the hour just before dawn.

  To make sure she does not get into these pages I am closing them very firmly after each entry and placing a paperweight on the cover.

  This morning my governess asked if I had twisted my ankle, because she had noticed I seemed slightly lame. I do not remember twisting it, but we have strapped it up with a crêpe bandage. It is a nuisance, but I expect it will heal very soon.

  Today, Mother and Father are making preparations for their visit to France and Belgium. It is all part of Father’s Great Work, and something they do two or three times a year. I hope that when I’m older I might be allowed to accompany them on their journeys. The prospect is a bit alarming though, because I have hardly been beyond this corner of Norfolk. I don’t count the three years when Fosse House was requisitioned for a convalescent home for soldiers wounded in World War II, and Mother and Father decamped to a house in Scotland to live with Mother’s cousins. I was only four at the time; we were there for four years and the memories are all bad ones. The younger Scottish cousins bullied me and made apple pie beds and tied my plaits to the bedposts while I was asleep, and there were uncles with loud bluff voices and aunts who sniffed disapprovingly at Mother. I hated them all and I hated living there, so I don’t think about it, not ever. I don’t even look at the photographs and sketches of Fosse House in those years – the soldiers and the nurses who lived here then – because I can’t bear knowing the house had a life of its own while I was away. I think my father hated being away from the house as much as I did; he had locked up his beloved library and left reams of instructions about what could be touched in the house and what could not, and how windows on the ground floor must never be opened after dusk on account of the poisonous night air from the marshes. He took as much of his work as he could to the Scottish house, but it was not the same. He did not like doing the things Mother’s family liked doing, which was shooting game and tramping about the hills, and making disparaging remarks about people who read books and foraged into the past.

  Mother hated being in Scotland because she did not like her family and because she believed the soldiers would damage Fosse House while we were away. She said it made no difference that they were recovering from battle wounds, you could not trust soldiers, everyone knew that, and it was no use people saying they were mostly officers because officers were often the worst.

  While my parents are away my governess lives at Fosse House, and we have lessons, which mostly I like. We study great English writers and poets – later we might read some of the French writers; my governess says my French is coming along very well, and we could try Victor Hugo or possibly the poetry of Louise Colet, although Mme Colet’s private life is to be much deplored. I thought, but did not say, that at least the lady had a private life, which is more than I have.

  Sometimes we listen to music. We have a gramophone in the drawing room, and I am allowed to buy records with my small allowance and Christmas or birthday money. Father sometimes listens to the records with me – those are the rare occasions when we do
something together. Mother often tells us she likes music, but usually she listens to two movements of a symphony, then says she cannot sit here all afternoon doing nothing.

  It was Father who told me about Leonora. She was his aunt or great-aunt or third cousin – he is not sure of the exact relationship – and she had been part of a famous choir in Belgium.

  ‘Her name was Leonora,’ he said, and with the pronouncing of the name, a curious thing happened to me. I thought: Leonora. Leonora. It was as if a connection had been made, as if a door had been opened, and something that had been waiting in Fosse House’s darknesses for a very long time was peering out … Leonora, who had sung in a choir, and been afraid of something, so dreadfully afraid …

  On Sundays we go to church and while my parents are away my governess and I take nature walks. This week, though, my foot is still troublesome so we don’t walk very far.

  It is quite difficult to write my diary while my governess is living in the house.

  I have received a postcard from Mother and Father from Belgium. They are staying in a place called Liège. The name touches a chord deep within my mind, and reading the postcard and looking at the picture on the front, I have the feeling that Leonora is watching me.

  The postcard shows an old stone building with a small bell tower surmounted by a cross, so it is either a church or perhaps a convent. I stared at it for a very long time, and I have it before me now, propped up on a corner of my dressing table where I am writing this. It’s as if I recognize the place – no, it’s Leonora who is doing that. How long will I have to fight her before she leaves me alone, I wonder …? Sometimes I hate my father for telling me about her.

  The message on the postcard says Mother and Father are having a pleasant time and the weather is good. They hope I am well and ensuring the house is locked up at night.

  I have found Liège in my atlas and in the encyclopedia, and it’s one of those old towns soaked in the romantic history of so many European places: the small states and dukedoms with princes and margraves and little turreted castles. Reading about it, tracing its boundaries, I keep thinking: yes, I know that – and that. But how do I know? How?