by Sarah Rayne
She took a deep breath and swarmed over the gates, using the iron spikes at the top as handholds, and dropped down on the other side quite easily. So far so good.
It was very eerie indeed in the cemetery. Huge old trees rose up at the far end, sharply outlined against the night sky, and behind them was the cold outline of the new moon. I’m grave-robbing by moonlight, thought Imogen in sudden panic. But I won’t think too deeply about it; I’ll get in and look at the graves and then out again – bam! – and it’ll all only brush the topmost layer of my mind.
Edmund’s grave was ahead of her. There was the plain cross that Quincy had described, which would mark the grave until the ground had settled sufficiently for a headstone. Aunt Thalia would have something huge and marbly, and order it to be engraved with something mawkish. Had Thalia really sat out here, talking to the dead Edmund in the darkening afternoon? Imogen wondered if Edmund’s head had been put back, and instantly wished she had not thought this. In and out – bam! – remember?
A small night wind had whipped up from nowhere. It was whispering to itself in the trees, and ruffling the grass around the edges of the graves. As Imogen approached her parents’ grave, there was a scuttering on the ground and something small and clawed darted into the shadows. Rats? If I start imagining rats I’ll be lost. I’ll think it was a squirrel, except that squirrels aren’t nocturnal – or are they? It was probably a mouse. A vole. More frightened of me than I am of it. I’m not frightened of mice, anyway. I’m frightened of headless corpses and I’m very frightened indeed of living people being buried by mistake. Concentrate, Imogen. That’s the grave there, I can see the chrysanthemums Quincy said she bought. And I think – oh God, I think there’s something following me! No, there isn’t, it’s the scuttling creature again. Or it’s an owl in the trees. Yes, there it goes. Imogen stood for a moment watching the owl soar out of the tree and swoop its way across the night sky. Lovely. In another minute I’ll have to look at the graves. All right, deep breath, Imogen, and then aim the torch. On and then straight off again. Here I go.
She flicked on the torch and heard her own indrawn gasp of horror. Ice-water seemed to fill her veins.
The two-second viewing showed Imogen something she had not bargained for. She had thought it would be easy to make sure that there was no disturbance. But she had forgotten, or perhaps had never known, that graves are never left open overnight.
Her mother’s grave had been filled in and to see the coffin she would have to dig.
Leo had kept in the shadows well behind Imogen as she padded through the night. He thought she was so intent on whatever she was doing and wherever she was going that she was not aware of his presence.
When he realised she was making for the cemetery he felt a prickle of deep-seated fear. Quench that at once, man of science! The trouble was that however much you thought you had stripped away the primitive beliefs and the ancient superstitions, something always remained to betray you. It was betraying him now, watching Imogen climb over the gates of the cemetery. He waited until the shadows had swallowed her up, and then went after her, feeling muscles and tendons protest as he pulled himself over the portals and dropped down on the other side. The black comedy of the situation struck him forcibly; he thought wryly that he had always been able to beat a hasty exit from a lady’s bedroom if her official partner turned up unexpectedly, but that diving out through back doors or conservatories, or even climbing out of windows, had hardly equipped him for breaking into a locked cemetery. As he scanned the shadows, he was uneasily aware that he was following a girl who was probably severely mentally disturbed, and that he was entirely alone with her. Serve you right if she attacks you in a psychotic rage!
He lost her for a while in the thick darkness inside the churchyard, and had to prowl stealthily up and down the grass verges, peering into the shadows and listening. And then he caught a soft scrabbling sound over to his right, and turned sharply. Imogen? Yes, he could see the white triangle of her face and the black hair melting into the night.
For several crowded minutes he could not identify what she was doing, and then he suddenly understood, and his skin crawled. She’s digging up a grave. She’s trying to get at her parents!
For several seconds the sheer horror of it froze him into immobility, and then he went forward, grabbing Imogen by the arms and pulling her clear of the oblong of newly-turned earth. She struggled and fought him, beating against his chest with clenched fists and drawing breath to scream. There was a moment when she was pressed hard against him, and he felt her heart pounding wildly with terror. He grabbed her hands, and said, ‘Imogen, you’re safe. I’m a friend! Leo Sterne. Don’t you remember me? From Briar House. For pity’s sake don’t scream!’
His use of her name jerked her out of some of the fear, and she twisted round in his arms, staring at him. Her eyes were huge and fearful, the pupils so wildly dilated that they looked completely black. Drugs? Or just fear? But when Imogen spoke, although her voice was breathless, it was perfectly sensible. ‘Dr Sterne . . .’
He said, ‘Yes. It’s all right, Imogen.’
Imogen made an impatient movement, and Leo tightened his grip in case she tried to attack him. ‘It isn’t all right,’ she said in a low, urgent voice. ‘That’s the whole point. My mother—’
‘She’s dead, yes, I know about that. Is this her grave? Listen, Imogen, it’s a dreadful tragedy, but you’ll come out on the other side, I promise you will. I’ll help you.’
Imogen jerked free of his hands angrily. ‘No! You don’t understand. You don’t!’ she cried, and Leo heard her voice spiral into panic again.
‘Listen now, we’ll talk about it together.’ He took a step towards her. ‘Imogen, we can talk about it all night if you want and no one will mind.’ He could feel her mind accelerating, not into hysteria but into panic, and he braced himself. Impossible to call up any kind of hypnotic tricks under these conditions and he had no idea what drugs she might have been given, but he had already automatically made a start with the old, proven method of repeating her name as often as possible to create a bridge from his mind to hers.
Imogen shook her head as if to dislodge something that was obscuring her vision. ‘No, listen, Dr Sterne, you really don’t understand! I don’t think my mother’s dead. There’s a – I think there’s a chance she’s been buried alive! That’s why I had to come here.’ She stopped, and then said, ‘Only I didn’t know – I forgot that they’d have filled the grave in straight after the service.’
The forlorn, macabre logic of this scraped painfully against Leo’s mind, but he said at once, ‘Imogen, it isn’t likely. It isn’t even possible. Listen, Imogen, listen to me.’ Almost without having to think, he scooped up his mental strength as if it was a glittering sphere and projected it forward with such force that he saw her blink. She flinched as if she had been struck, and then he felt her mind leap forward to meet his, and there was a moment of fusion so complete and so dazzling that for a few seconds Leo lost all awareness of his surroundings. Something strong and sweet and light-filled shivered on the air between them, and Leo stared at Imogen and saw that she was staring back at him.
And then awareness returned, and Leo recovered himself and reviewed the situation swiftly. He had no way yet of telling whether Imogen was delusional or whether she was in the grip of a phobia – something connected with dying, with premature burial? Although she was certainly in a state of immense tension, she did not seem actually out of touch with reality. Probably a phobia, then. His mind flew ahead, planning: get her back to Briar House, assess the situation properly. The dilation of her pupils might be from drugs conventionally prescribed, or they might be unconventional and self-administered. Or it might be purely a manifestation of fear; being alone in the middle of a graveyard in the pitch dark was enough to rock the most imperturbable of imaginations. And, of course, said his mind treacherously, it might even be from that remarkable bolt of energy that sizzled between you just now. But you’d
better not delve too deeply into your own reactions to that, Dr Sterne!
Imogen said in a desperate, despairing whisper, ‘Dr Sterne, I’m not mad, I’m truly not. I know I’m supposed to have – done something weird, but this is different. Please, please, will you help me.’ She reached out and took his arm, and Leo felt the prickle of electricity again as her hand closed over his coat sleeve. He felt her panic slice into his own mind, but he felt as well the conviction that drove it. Just for a moment, he thought: supposing this isn’t a phobia at all? Supposing it’s something deeper? Something akin to that strange, ancient instinct that once warned primeval man when danger approached, and that still lingered in the mind’s dark corners today, so that you suddenly found yourself turning your head unprompted because you knew absolutely and completely and inexplicably that someone was watching you? Supposing she’s right? he thought, appalled.
He shook the thought off at once, but lying treacherously beneath it was another. She doesn’t just suspect that her mother isn’t dead. She knows. She knows something she isn’t telling me.
He flung his mind forward again, this time with authority, and said, ‘There’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there, Imogen? Isn’t there?’
Something I’m not telling him. Something I can’t tell him. Quincy stealing out here earlier this afternoon. Thalia talking to her dead son in his grave . . . People don’t do that kind of thing, not normal, sane people. He’d either think I was mad or he’d think Thalia was. And I don’t know, not absolutely and definitely, that Quincy got it right, or even how normal and sane Quincy is. No, I can’t tell him.
The silence was complete, it was closing about them, wrapping them in intimacy. Imogen knew that Dr Sterne could not see, not fully, what she was thinking, but he could sense something. She could feel his mind reaching deep into her own, she could feel it like a thin radiance going back and back, lighting dark corners, illuminating deeply buried things, things you would never admit to anyone, things that you might not even admit to yourself. In a minute she would have to say something, she would have to give her reasons for being out here, and she would have to give a reason why her mother’s coffin had to be dug up. And the reasons would have to be good.
She said at last, ‘Yes. Yes, I do know something.’
‘Yes? Something you’ve heard? Something you’ve seen? Imogen, tell me.’
‘I can’t,’ said Imogen, her mind working furiously, dodging the insistent arc of awareness. She looked at Dr Sterne very levelly. He was quite old, of course, probably about forty, but he had rather nice eyes. You felt you wanted him to approve of you. Was there a way of getting him to help? Because it had been mad – yes, she would use that word – it had been absolutely insane to think she could do this by herself. If Dr Sterne had really seen those frantic out-of-control minutes when she had flung herself forward and believed she could dig the earth up with her bare hands it was small wonder he had acted as if he was dealing with a full-blown lunatic.
She took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m really not mad. I know how it looks, but I’ve got to uncover my mother’s coffin and I’ve got to do it now. And if you don’t help me,’ said Imogen, staring up at him, ‘I’ll start screaming. I’ll scream so loudly that somebody will hear and come out to see what’s happening. And then,’ said Imogen, hating herself, but going on, ‘and then I’ll say you brought me out here and that you tried to rape me on the grave. If you don’t help me, that’s what I’ll do.’
Dan had spent most of the afternoon working. The story was unfolding with almost frightening rapidity; several times he felt as if he was at the wheel of a car that was accelerating out of his control. He could not decide if this was a good thing or not.
He was starting to tighten the web about his Rosamund and it was tightening very satisfactorily indeed. The hysteria that had gripped her when she discovered the results of Margot’s bloodthirsty machinations had sent her spinning into wild hysteria, which was exactly what Margot had been counting on, the bitch.
No one in the family had believed Rosamund’s frantic sobbed-out story of human bones in the old wash house, shreds of flesh still clinging to them, and the distinctive wedding ring – ‘My mother’s wedding ring which she inherited from her own mother!’ – glinting amongst a spill of human finger-bones. No one had believed it, but it had to be investigated. A reluctant search was made by torchlight.
And of course by that time there was nothing out of place. Margot had laid her snare cunningly and well; she had disposed of all the evidence, and the wash house presented a blandly innocent face to the two hapless members of the family detailed to the task. That chapter closed with Margot standing exultantly on the river bank, the greenish water-light rippling across her face as she tipped the bones and the wedding ring into the water and watched the fast current take them downstream.
And so Rosamund was duly shut away for good by her sorrowing family. A very great pity, they all said. The thing they had tried to sidestep for seventeen years and protect her from – the curse, you might even call it – had finally overtaken the child. She was plainly mad, because sane people did not accuse their relations of gruesome murders. Sane people did not go scrabbling around in disused wash houses in the first place, for heaven’s sake. What had the child been doing there? demanded the family, none of whom had the remotest suspicion of Margot, or of how she had lured Rosamund into the place and locked the door. Rosamund had perforce spent almost a whole night in the dark cobwebby outbuilding, with the boiled-down remains of her parents for sole company. Dan reckoned that this was sufficient to send anyone’s reason spinning a bit off course.
Rosamund’s asylum was in England’s bleak north-east; a nightmare mansion with an appalling reputation, and its very name caused indrawn gasps of horror and blenching cheeks, not dissimilar from the enthusiastic hissings and booings of Victorian audiences at the entrance of the cloak-swirling archvillain. It had been important to avoid descending into melodrama at this point, but Dan thought he had avoided it.
The most recent chapter had seen the appearance on the scene of a somewhat questionable doctor, who was currently the ruling figure at the asylum. Physically he was not unattractive, but his methods were unexpected and his intentions towards Rosamund somewhat ambiguous. Dan had toyed with the idea of making him a leftover from the Nazi concentration camps but had finally decided against it. Don’t let’s ladle on the gore too thickly and don’t let’s stretch the credibility of the plot too much either, Daniel. Mind games can be just as scary as blood and guts. And on consideration, he rather liked the idea of Dr Bentinck playing sinister mind games with Rosamund, and probably finding her sexually attractive at the same time. You could not write a book without having a good dash of sex in it; well, you could, but not if you wanted it to sell.
It was unfortunate that this chapter had seen further signs of rebellion on the part of the typewriter, which was developing an amiable habit of creating its own fantasy world by switching unprompted to its in-built foreign print wheel, so that you found you had typed half a page in Cyrillic or Greek script without realising. Dan had made cautious inquiries about the purchase of a new one, which had been greeted with hilarity. Nobody used typewriters these days, it seemed; they all used word processors. In fact, said the salesman, speaking in the indulgent tone of one contemplating a lost culture, he did not know where you might buy a typewriter any more, not for love or money. At this point Dan had said, very crossly, ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend me,’ and walked out of the shop.
It was seven o’clock when he reluctantly put Rosamund and her attendant villains away. Oliver had listened without comment to the explanation that Dan would be out to dinner tonight, and had gravely said that he would be perfectly all right on his own. He had some work to do on his own account anyway, he said; students’ essays to go through, and a lecture for a postgraduate group to prepare.
As Dan was leaving, Oliver said, with the air of one endeavouring to appea
r immensely worldly, ‘I suppose you’ll be pretty late getting home, won’t you?’
‘Pretty late tonight, or pretty early tomorrow morning,’ said Dan, and grinned at his brother’s disconcerted expression.
Chapter Twelve
Thalia had suggested they meet at Ingram’s small company flat just off Great Portland Street. ‘I’m half living there for the moment,’ she had said. ‘And it would be so much more relaxed than a restaurant.’ There was the slightest pause, and then her voice slid an octave lower. ‘Also we can talk in privacy,’ she said, as if, thought Dan, she visualised the Soho bistros as seething with eavesdroppers, all vying for the inside dirt on Ingram’s. Which either meant that dirt was there for the uncovering and she was prepared to uncover it or she was setting the scene for a grand seduction. Dan was still trying to decide which would be preferable when he arrived at the flat.
It was just on eight and the sun was setting over Regent’s Park when he announced himself over the door intercom and went up to the third floor. The interior had a prosperous air; the stairs and landings were carpeted and there were anonymous but pleasing flower prints on the walls, and tubs of cheese plants and aspidistra.
The flat was a fairly typical company pied à terre; clean and modern and comfortable, but a bit characterless. There was a small hall, a surprisingly large sitting room with adjacent kitchen and, Dan presumed, a bedroom. He found himself remembering Margot again, because Margot might very well take a flat like this for her various nefarious activities.
Thalia greeted him normally, asking what he would like to drink and whether he could eat caviare. Dan, who normally opened a tin of whatever came first to hand, said with pleasure that he could eat any amount of caviare. It came rolled inside thin wafers of smoked salmon with lemon wedges and brown bread and butter, and it was followed by cold game pie with three different kinds of salad. There was Montrachet to drink, and fresh fruit and Stilton and Brie to round things off. Thalia appeared to regard it as a semi-business occasion, and seemed to expect the interview to take up where it had left off in Ingram’s. That will teach you to read mental thigh-stroking and carnal appetite at every corner, Daniel.
