The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery

by Sarah Rayne

  French was not his first language and the words were fragmented, but the emotions, the sheer driving urgency of passion, were whole and sweet and undeniable.

  And here, at that part of Leonora’s memories, I am faced with a blank, brick wall, for whatever those two did that night – and, I suppose, on subsequent nights – I have not the knowledge or the experience of the knowledge to interpret it. I cannot enter into their emotions, either physically or mentally. I know Iskander’s emotions got the better of him, and I know Leonora matched his passion. But that is all I know. Leonora retreats from me at that point. Her wild, dangerous, uncharted flight across war-ravaged Europe with her lover vanishes, and I am left with only my own memories where once I had hers.

  I’ve liked setting down all that about Leonora and Iskander. It makes it all less shadowy – it makes them more real. But they were real, they lived.

  Do my parents ever guess that Leonora is inside my mind? How far does it go, this overshadowing? Does she sit at my place in the dining room, and do my parents ever have the impression that it is no longer their daughter but another person who is there?

  But I shall not let her take over completely, I shall not …

  I cannot write more now. Fosse House’s darknesses are closing around me …

  There came another of the breaks, and Michael got up to pour a drink from the decanter on the desk.

  Luisa’s diary lay on the desk, the lamp casting a pool of soft light over its pages. The room was warm and the house was silent and unthreatening. Michael was even starting to feel a bit sleepy. But he would prefer not to actually fall asleep, and Luisa’s diary might help to keep him awake. He had no idea what he would do if he heard footsteps beyond this room, or if the door from the hall was slowly pushed open.

  He reached for the diary again, seeing that the next entry was in slightly different ink, and that it appeared to have been made some considerable time after the previous one.

  I see I ended my last entry with a reference to Fosse House’s darknesses. They were here before I was born, of course, so I grew up with them. I accepted them without thinking about them, as I accepted the other things that made up my life – the draughty rooms of the house, the exercises I was set by my governess, the sewing tasks allotted by Mother, Father’s fussiness about keeping doors locked and windows secured after nightfall. The vast wastelands of silence when my mother and father went away.

  They returned from Liège and Holzminden two weeks ago, because, so they said, they did not want to miss my fifteenth birthday. We had a small lunch party for the occasion; some of the ladies from church attended, along with the vicar and his family and the curate. The ladies argued about the flower rota at St Augustine’s; the vicar and my father discussed Horace throughout all three courses to the exclusion of the rest of the guests, the vicar’s wife and two daughters enjoyed their usual Poor-Luisa-no-friends-no-life session, and the curate upset most of a bottle of Father’s wine over the tablecloth. Mother says the tablecloth is ruined, even though she soaked it in cold water and salt, damask never washes well, and it is enough to send a person straight into the arms of Rome.

  But it was a small, welcome event, even with a little laughter when the vicar emerged from Horace for long enough to make a mild joke, and to wish me many happy returns of the day. Life resumed its ordinary pace after that.

  Fifteen

  It is November – when I look back I think it has always been November in this house, as if it might be trapped inside some kind of grey, hopeless Autumn of its own. And it’s evening. The house should be silent at this hour – as much as it ever is silent – but it is not. It is filled with the whisperings and soft footfalls that I have heard ever since I can remember. Mother often complains about them. Bad plumbing, she says. Ill-fitting windows, or the wind blowing through chinks in the roof. An army of carpenters and builders would never cure the problems, and how a person is expected to sleep at nights in such a ramshackle, ill-kept house is beyond her comprehension.

  This afternoon, with a dull light creeping across the fens, I was in the little sitting-room, finishing some sewing. Presently, Mother would come in, as she always did at that time of the evening, and say please to tidy away my work and help lay the table for supper. She would wonder whether Father would join us in the dining room, or whether he would want a tray in the library, and grumble yet again about him being eccentric, and say that eccentricity was all very well in its place, but it made a great deal of extra work in a house. Then she would say she should have married her cousin Charles.

  I was pretending that just this once she would say something different. ‘A young man has called for you, Luisa,’ she might say. Or, ‘I have invited neighbours for supper tonight, so put on a nice frock and brush your hair.’ Deep down I knew it would never happen, but I liked to imagine it.

  But when the door opened it was not Mother, it was Father, and he was carrying the sketch he brought from Liège together with a sheaf of papers covered in his handwriting.

  ‘I’m glad you’re in here, Luisa,’ he said. ‘I need your help with a little project.’

  This was instantly interesting because Father never asked anyone for help, or, if he did, it was never me.

  ‘It’s about my cousin,’ he said.

  ‘Stephen? The one in the war camp? In the sketch?’

  He was pleased I had remembered. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if he really is in the sketch, but I’d like to think he is.’ He sat down, and I saw that he was holding the sketch in the way he had when he first showed it to me – smoothing his hands over and over the glass. Once he lifted it and pressed it against his chest, and once – this was quite disturbing – he raised it and laid his cheek against it.

  Then he set it down and said, ‘I’ve had some papers sent to me by the curator of the museum in Liège – the place where I found the sketch. There are a couple of letters written by a German officer. My German isn’t as good as it might be, but I did study it briefly, you know, and I think I’ve got the sense of what the man wrote. And there are several articles written by a Russian journalist – I can’t read Russian, but some are written in French and those I can read. I expect I can find a Russian translator for the others. They both knew Stephen – the German, and the Russian journalist. It’s a real find, Luisa.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘That Stephen came home. He escaped from the prisoner of war camp at Holzminden and somehow he got back to England. He came here to this house.’ He sat back, for once glowing with achievement, waiting for me to say something.

  ‘How did he escape?’

  ‘I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter,’ he said impatiently, and got up and went to the window to try the latch, as if reassuring himself it was fastened. He often did this, but until now I had never seen it as anything other than what Mother called his finickiness.

  ‘Luisa, do you ever hear strange sounds in this house? Footsteps. Soft whisperings and tappings, as if someone is—’

  ‘Trying to get in?’ I had never put it into words before – I had never even allowed the thought to form, but now that I said it I knew it was what I had thought for some time.

  ‘Yes,’ said my father eagerly. He leaned forward and there was a look in his eyes I had seen occasionally before – a look that always made me feel a bit sick and vaguely frightened. ‘And someone really is trying to get in,’ he said, in a soft voice. ‘Someone comes to those windows almost every night and tries to get in. Asks to be let in …’

  I stared at him, remembering the soft entreaties I had heard over the years. ‘Let me in …’ How often had I heard those whispers, and how often had I drawn the curtains tightly, walked to another room, immersed myself in a book with my hands pressed over my ears so I should not hear. I had thought it was part of Leonora – that it was another of her tricks to get into my mind – but since father brought the sketch back, I had begun to think the let-me-in whisper was a man’s voice. Was that because
Stephen really was in the sketch, and bringing it into the house had somehow strengthened his presence here? But this was so horrible an idea that I pushed it away.

  Father was watching me. ‘You’ve heard him, haven’t you?’ he said, and before I could answer he continued. ‘But I can see you have. I’ve heard him as well. Asking to be let in. I’ve never let him in, though – I’ve never dared.’ His face was white and shrunken, as if the flesh had shrivelled away from the bones, but his eyes blazed with life. ‘But now we must do it. Tonight, Luisa, we must let him in.’

  ‘Oh no—’

  ‘I must. I’ll never have any peace until I do. Until I find out the truth. The people who come to live here after me – you, Luisa, perhaps your children if you have any – they won’t have any peace, either. Stephen won’t let them.’

  I said, ‘But – he isn’t real. He died all those years ago. We mightn’t know how he died or where or exactly when, but it’s so long ago. He’s just a – an old memory. Houses have old memories, and that’s what Stephen is. That’s all he is.’ As I said it, I was thinking: please, oh please, say that I’m right.

  But he didn’t. He said, ‘It’s sharp of you to say he’s a memory. So he is. But you see, Luisa, some memories can be dangerous.’

  ‘How? What could he do?’

  ‘It’s not what he could do,’ said my father. ‘I think he was a gentle soul. Damaged by the war, but essentially gentle. It’s what people want to do to him. You remember I told you about him being sentenced to death?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen to this from the German letters,’ he said, eagerly, and took several sheets of paper from the large envelope. They were covered with his neat, scholarly writing.

  ‘It was written by an officer called Hugbert Edreich,’ said Father. ‘He seems to have been part of a small secret group of German soldiers who came to England for the express purpose of finding Stephen.’

  ‘And executing him?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Father, eagerly. ‘Yes, they came to do that.’

  It’s a curious thing about my father – also, to some extent, my mother – that they never seem to realize that some of things they say or do might be hurtful. Leonora’s parents had been the same – I knew that. Unable to feel or imagine feelings in others. It simply did not occur to my father that I might find it upsetting to hear that a young man had been hunted down in this very house, so that he could be killed.

  ‘The letter is addressed to Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer,’ he said. ‘He was the commanding officer of the prisoner of war camp at Holzminden – I’ve been able to confirm that. I don’t know how Edreich got the letter out – or even if Niemeyer ever actually received it. Letters sent to England from the soldiers in France were censored, so that no information could be given away about placements or plans. But I don’t think outward letters were quite as strictly censored. It wasn’t like the last war, you know. In the Great War, people knew, in a general way, about spies, but there was no thought of the enemy actually coming into the country. There wasn’t the same kind of suspicion. I don’t know, either, how it ended up in Liège, except that they’ve gathered a great deal of memorabilia from that war. I’ll read what Hugbert Edreich wrote.’

  (Later, I found the letter in Father’s desk, and I copied it into this diary. I don’t know if it will ever be of any use, but it’s another small part of Stephen.)

  The strangeness in my father’s eyes seemed stronger, and I glanced uneasily towards the door, wondering if I should call Mother. But he was already reading aloud, and here, on the next page, is what the letter says.

  To Hauptmann Niemeyer

  Sir,

  I write to you at the request of Hauptfeldwebel Barth, to respectfully inform you that our task progresses well. I send this report from a small village very near to the place to which we must travel (which I do not name in case this letter is read by others). We are staying at a small tavern (the Hauptfeldwebel wishes me to assure you that we are mindful of the funds given to us and are not being excessive in our spending).

  We have been able to talk to local people, although we are careful to preserve our disguises. We are certain that Stephen Gilmore has made his way back to his family house, and is there now.

  I have suggested that the correct procedure would be to bring Gilmore back to Germany, but Hauptfeldwebel Barth fears he might cheat us again, as he and the Russian journalist, Alexei Iskander, did at Holzminden. Therefore, he intends that the sentence of execution will be carried out here. I am unsure whether this is possible – such a sentence carried out in a country other than the one where it was originally passed could be seen as transgressing the law.

  However, be assured that I shall obey whatever commands I am given.

  I send my respectful duty to you,

  Hugbert Edreich

  There was a long silence. Then I said, ‘They came here, didn’t they? They came to kill Stephen.’

  ‘Yes, I believe they did. The death sentence had been passed in Holzminden – I don’t know why or what Stephen’s crime had been, but I don’t think four German soldiers would have risked coming to the country at that time just to recapture an escaped prisoner of war. They came to this house to get him. I think they got into the grounds. I think Stephen saw them or heard them, and he tried to get back into the house to escape being captured and being—’

  ‘Executed?’

  ‘Yes. I think he was in the walled garden when they came, Luisa.’

  In the walled garden … Then Stephen was the shadow that occasionally darted across the gardens at twilight … He was inside the smudged twilight images when the trees seemed to take on the shapes of men … And the echoes trickling through my mind at dusk were his echoes as he fled from his pursuers. ‘Let me in …’

  ‘Did he get back into the house?’ I said, and I could hear how my voice was strained and desperate. ‘Did he escape them?’

  ‘I don’t know. What I do know is that there’s no record anywhere of his death. He simply vanished. So, seven years after that war ended, I had him pronounced as officially dead by the courts. I hated doing that, you know, but it was necessary if I was to inherit this house. It had been empty all those years. It was falling into terrible disrepair.’ He glanced towards the window. Someone had left the wrought-iron gate to the walled garden open, latched back against the wall. Mother would probably send me out to close it after supper. She would not go herself, because she disliked the walled garden, saying it was a gloomy old place.

  Father said, ‘If they did execute him, they would have done so in secrecy. That German, Hugbert Edreich, wrote in his letter that he wonders if the sentence would have been legal in this country.’

  ‘It might have been seen as murder?’ I said tentatively.

  ‘Yes. I think that’s what he meant. He sounds a decent sort of man, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Would they have shot Stephen?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shooting was one of the more usual forms of execution, though. But we could save him, Luisa.’ He came closer to me. ‘Think about it. Stephen tried to run back to this house – he called out as he ran – he called out to be let in. We’ve both heard him.’

  ‘There was someone in the house, then? Someone who could have let him in?’

  ‘I don’t know that, either. But it’s Stephen we hear, Luisa. He’s constantly trying to get inside the house—’ He broke off, breathing a little too fast, the dreadful mad look glaring from his eyes. I pretended it was only the light from the nearby lamp making him look like that, but I knew it wasn’t. ‘We could save him,’ he said again.

  ‘But he isn’t real. How can you save someone from something that happened such a long time ago? Because—’ I struggled with a complicated concept, then said, ‘Whatever happened all those years ago has happened. You can’t change it.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ he said softly. ‘Perhaps you’re too young to understand. I forget how young you are. You wouldn’t grasp how Time
operates. How it can travel forwards as well as backwards. It bleeds, you see, Luisa. If it’s damaged, Time bleeds. And sometimes it bleeds forward.’

  I don’t know if I’ve written that down correctly, because I don’t know if I’ve remembered it correctly – I certainly don’t know if I’ve understood it.

  ‘How could we save him?’ I asked.

  My father said, ‘Tonight, when he whispers at the window, we’re going to let him in.’

  That was the point at which I knew he was mad.

  Now I’m sitting in the library, with the curtains open to the night garden. I’m listening for the footsteps I have heard so often in this house and for the whispering that can lie on the air like torn fragments of old silk.

  I’m not sure where Father is, and I don’t know what he intends to do. He was silent throughout supper, but that isn’t unusual, and it drew no comment from Mother. My own silence did, though, and Mother subjected me to a series of questions about my health. Some were boring, some were ridiculous, and several were embarrassing. I said I was quite all right, thank you, only perhaps a little tired.

  To this, Mother at once said she was tired as well, in fact she believed she had one of her headaches coming on, not that she expected anyone to understand or sympathize. She would take one of her sleeping tablets and hope she was granted a reasonable night’s sleep for once.

  I mumbled something and said I would read in the library before going up to bed. I had the newest Agatha Christie mystery. Father’s eyes flickered, and the shared knowledge of what we were going to do passed between us.

  The Christie book is in front of me as I write this, and I see I have reached the part where M’sieu Hercule Poirot is about to reveal the killer’s name. I wish I could continue reading, and I wish I could be interested in nothing more than finding out who committed the three (was it three?) murders earlier in the story.