The Empty Frame (13 page)

With Magnus holding Edmund Scott-Carr's Victorian writing box, and its cache of ancient copy books blotted by little William Neale, they made their way back through the tunnel, up the steps and out into the dappled sunlight of the trees. Nobody said very much. Together they pulled the manhole cover back into place and scattered leaf mould over it, to hide their traces. They were all thinking about Miss Adeline, and about what she might say when she saw the box. “You will know what you are looking for, when you have found it,” she had told them.

The copy books were proof William Neale existed, unless of course they were fakes. But that was not the whole of the story, nor the end of it. What had really happened? And where was his body?

As they walked away from the river they were all thinking about the cruelty meted out to William Neale. Sam felt very much at one with him because he himself never did brilliantly at school, and a teacher had once called him thick. Floss was wondering more about William's mother and father. She herself had a hot
temper, like Lady Alice, and she could quite see how you could lash out and hit someone just a little bit too hard, with the most horrible consequences. If that had happened, then she felt sorry for Lady Alice Neale.

Magnus could think only of William, subject to cruel torments for nothing that was his fault, subject to impossible pressures, being driven to learn so that he could achieve and achieve, being confined in a tiny room, somewhere even smaller than the chamber under the river, shut up and accidentally left to die. His own father had driven him hard, when he'd been tutoring him, and had lost his temper when Magnus had got things wrong. He'd hit him sometimes and called him an idiot. In the end, he'd become very strange and withdrawn, then he'd simply walked out of the house and left them. They never saw him again, though he sent money sometimes, in brown envelopes, so they knew he was still alive. That was when Magnus's mother had become ill in her mind. Not knowing what she was doing, she had carried on his father's cruelty, and shut him up, and made him do housework and not let him go out to play.

When they got to Miss Adeline's cottage, they were ready to use the knocker at least three times, but the door was opened after the first knock, not by Miss Adeline, but by a large middle-aged woman in a pink nylon overall. She was holding a duster.

“We've come to see Miss Adeline,” Magnus said. “We're from the Abbey. We're staying with Maude, and Colonel Stickley.”

“Are you now?” said the woman, not very pleasantly and eyeing each of them in turn. “Expecting you, was she?”

“Sort of,” Sam informed her, peering over her shoulder. But the woman came out on to the doorstep, blocking his view down the hall.

“She's not here. They took her into hospital this morning. She had a bit of a ‘turn', in the night. I just came in as usual to clean round, water her plants and that.”

Sam immediately thought about his godmother. “It's not a stroke, is it?” he said anxiously.

The woman softened slightly. “Not that I've heard, but she's more than ninety years old, you know. She's on borrowed time. ‘Past your sell-by date, Miss A,' I tell her sometimes.”

“We'll come back when she's home,” Floss said.

“Want to leave that with me?” the woman said, looking inquisitively at the corner of the writing box which was poking out from its oil wrapping. “That's hers, isn't it? Lent it to you, did she? My goodness, that's not like Miss A. She's very particular.”

“It's not hers,” Magnus said, covering up the corner. “Well, not exactly. It's something we've found that we wanted to show her.”

It was obvious that the cleaning woman did not quite believe him. “Well, she's got something very like that,” she said suspiciously. “It's for writing paper and stuff. It was her mother's, her name's on the lid.”

“Well, this was her
father's
,” said Magnus with great authority, “and we have to deliver it into her hands.”

Defeated, the woman made to shut the door. “I'd watch yourselves today,” she said, as she watched them go down the path, “if you're going back to the Abbey. There's been a bit of a do up there. Builders in trouble or something. They've done some damage, and they only made a start this morning. You can't trust anyone these days, to do a proper job. The Colonel's on his way back specially, from London. The police are up there now. I don't know. What with Miss A, and this heat, I need a sit-down. It never rains but it pours.”

“I know, it's awful isn't it,” Floss said sympathetically. It was obvious that the woman just wanted to talk; she was feeling a bit sorry for her. But the two boys hadn't even waited to hear the rest of the sentence. They'd already set off at a run towards the Abbey buildings, in spite of being impeded by all Wilf's tools and the writing box.

Floss caught up with them at the turn in the drive. They could see several police cars, with engines running and blue lights flashing. Uniformed men were clustered round the base of the turret, pulling out long strings of
luminous orange tape and sealing things off, in case people came too close.

Wilf was talking to one of the policemen, next to a builder's van, and someone was passing round a Thermos flask. The three children looked at the turret. It seemed exactly as before, chubby, foursquare and reliable, apart from all the striped cones round it, and the festoons of waving plastic tape. “What's happened, Wilf?” Sam shouted.

The man turned and waved. “I don't know. Had a good day? Brought my tools back?” His face was quite blank, like a page upon which nothing at all would permit itself to be written. But Magnus was not deceived. “What do you mean you ‘don't know', Wilf? Why are the police here?”

Before Wilf could open his mouth, a builder snorted, spraying tea all over his T-shirt. “I'll tell you, sunny Jim, we've only gone and put a crack about a mile wide in the Colonel's precious tower.”

“But why are the
police
here?” persisted Magnus.

One of the officers came over to them and put a hand on Magnus's shoulder but the boy immediately shrank away. “I'm afraid you can't go up to your room at the moment. We've had to seal it off. Your belongings have been brought down. Look, they're over there. Mr Wilkinson tells me there's another place you can sleep.”

“My caravan,” said Wilf, “the one in the stable yard. It's a snug little number, cosier than a portakabin. You don't want to go in one of those, you'll catch your death. Miss Maude'll sort it all out for you.”

“Isn't she still in Birmingham?” asked Sam.

“She was, but the Colonel telephoned her from London; she's on her way home. He's coming back too. He's had a piece of news, you see.” As he said this, a wave of emotion passed over Wilf's face, some strong feeling that seemed to the children to have come from his very core.

“What sort of news, Wilf?” asked Floss.

“Oh, y'know, just news,” and he swallowed very hard, and turned away.

The three children looked at each other and shrugged. Then Magnus said, “Can't you tell us anything about the tower?”

Wilf looked at them. “Well, one of the apprentices went mad with a drill, started work where he shouldn't have done, and it's caused a lot of damage. There's a crack down it now, from top to bottom, really big, you can almost get into it, and it's worst in your room, apparently.”

“Inside the fireplace?” asked Magnus.

“I can't say. Don't ask me. I've not been allowed up. They've sent for somebody from the Home Office now, they've obviously found something.”

“What?” said Magnus, thinking rapidly. Perhaps the Home Office person could have a look at the old copy books.

“I don't know. I haven't been told. That's the truth. That's because they've been waiting for the Colonel.”

“He's here,” Sam said. “Well, someone's here.”

There was a chugging noise behind them, and a black London taxi came along the drive and stopped at the Abbey entrance. Colonel Stickley got out of it, spoke to somebody inside, noticed Wilf and the children, and came stalking across the grass, rapidly, with hardly a trace of the limp.

“What are the police doing here?” he said fiercely. “I said no reporters, and they promised me faithfully—”

“Sir, they're here on other business,” Wilf said. “There's been a discovery, up in one of the turret dormitories. Somebody's waiting to see you, to explain everything.”

But Colonel Stickley turned away. “Can't see them just now, Wilf. It'll have to wait, whatever it is. Help me, will you… and these children.” He was staring down at them, blankly, as if he had never seen them before in his life. “Could they carry things? I need a little help… in the taxi…”

“Hang on, sir,” said Wilf, taking a firm grip on the old man's arm. “You're all knocked up.”

“It's David,” the old man said. “He's in the taxi.”

Wilf stared at him. “But sir, I thought they couldn't fly him back until tomorrow. I was all set, little reception, the lot. There's no food laid on.”

“He doesn't want food, Wilf.” And the Colonel turned to the bewildered children. “You see, it's my son. They released him and he's come home. He's in the taxi, my son David's in the taxi.” And he began to cry.

Rather shyly, Sam and Floss went forward to help, but Magnus withdrew and stood at some distance from the rest of them, under one of the great cedars that spread great shadows over the grass. This particular moment was too much for him, it was affecting him physically. There was a singing in his ears and he felt strangely light. He almost saw himself being plucked up from the lawn and borne away somewhere, into the summer sky. There was no longer a curse on the Abbey.

The son, who they had thought dead, had come home. Even as they had unwrapped the blotched copy books down in the tunnel, even as the wall of the turret had split, the living man, reunited with his father, had been coming home to the place that had been denied happiness for hundreds of years. Magnus was now quite certain that the Lady Alice would not walk again, or cry in the night. He believed that children would start coming back to the place. He believed that all would be well.

Wilf and Colonel Stickley were helping someone out of the taxi. The policemen and the builders, who had
obviously been told what had happened, all melted away discreetly. It was definitely not the time to ask about what had been discovered in the tower, nor to bring out the contents of the writing box. Floss took Magnus on one side and, trying to be very tactful, warned him to keep quiet for the time being. She knew that, once he had got his teeth into something, he was very reluctant to let it go. But he didn't need to be warned. He listened to the general talk and carried cases and thought about the time when he would be on his own again and able to do the thing which he had been brought to the Abbey to perform.

Cousin Maude got home minutes after the Colonel and everything became very emotional. Wilf cried and Maude cried, and David Stickley cried. Then everyone laughed. The Colonel brought up some bottles of wine from his cellar, and they all got slightly drunk. David Stickley, a thin, pale-faced man with the same gangling shape as his father, and with a shy, nice smile, said virtually nothing. He sat listening to the talk and stroking Arthur, who had curled up on his knee. When he was a child, he confided to Floss, he had wanted to be a vet. He hinted that Arthur was much too fat, which puzzled him because cats usually regulated their intake of food.

The three children listened hard to the talk about the man from the Home Office who was coming in the
morning, but any mention of what the builders had found was extremely and deliberately vague. All Floss could think about was that wire coat hanger that had dropped into the crack. She had known all along that there was a space behind the fireplace.

It was fun going to bed in Wilf's caravan, but all Magnus wanted was for the other two to go to sleep. He had laid all his plans for the one thing left that he must do, for the one remaining piece of the puzzle that must now be fitted into place.

It was after midnight when he slipped out of the caravan and across the stable yard. In his pocket was a key to the main entrance of the Abbey. He had taken this from a cupboard fitted out to hold dozens of keys, which was concealed in an understairs closet off the Great Hall. Cousin Maude had trustingly shown them this, lest one of them should ever get locked in. In one hand he held Wilf's big yellow flashlight and in the other a carrier bag. This contained some of the dry cat biscuits that Arthur loved so much, and two pieces of raw steak which he'd taken from the freezer in the buttery.

The floodlights were still on and lit the arched entrance all too clearly. He opened the main door, slipped inside and closed it behind him. Then he shone the torch ahead of him and stepped forwards into the darkness.

A glimpse into the Great Hall showed him that the Lady Alice Neale was safely in her frame. At supper, they had talked about the Colonel's shipping the portrait to the USA for some great historic exhibition, in the spring. But did Colonel Stickley know what Miss Adeline had told them? That Lady Alice did not like to be moved, and about the night guard in the London gallery, who had actually asked to be relieved of his duties because the atmosphere in the room, where she had been temporarily hung, had turned icy cold, filling him with terror? That the guard, too, had found the great frame empty, in the middle of the night?

Magnus crept past the tapestry of Balaam and his donkey, thinking of the flop-eared beast bowing down before the angel, and of Arthur who had fled in fear from the presence of Lady Alice. He passed Pontius Pilate, forever washing his guilt away, and crept down the chilly passageways until he reached the beginning of the stone spiral that led up to the turret dormitory. But here a dog rose to meet him. Magnus had the steak ready, and some of the cat biscuits, in case the dog didn't like the icy piece of meat. He scattered these liberally at the dog's feet and at once it sniffed inquisitively. Then it found the steak and, in spite of the ice crystals on it, started to attack it vigorously, with contented growly noises.

Magnus considered patting the dog, but decided it might suddenly remember what it had been posted there to do. So, giving it a wide berth and taking the second steak with him for the return journey, he began to ascend the stairs. The crack that ran down the inside of the turret had widened considerably, had become, in places, a jagged gaping hole, and he crunched over the debris of plaster and stones as he started to ascend.

The top room, their room, had a piece of orange tape stuck right across it and a sign that said No Entry. Very carefully, Magnus removed the tape, pushed open the door and went in. The room was quite bare now; the four divans and the flower-covered screens had been pushed against one wall. All the activity had obviously been focused on the fireplace, which was heavily criss-crossed with more orange tape. This too he removed and laid on the floor, hoping to be able to reconstruct it convincingly, for the police, before he went down again.

As he ducked his head and went under the canopy of the fireplace, he could feel his heart thumping. The drilling had had a devastating effect on this interior wall and there was a considerable heap of rubble roughly swept into one corner. He noticed his bit of sticking plaster on top of it. Now he was inside the fireplace, he could stand upright again. He shone the yellow torch on the hole that had appeared where the
original thin crack had been. It was about half a metre across at its widest point and it ran from ceiling to floor. He was looking into a tiny little room, a mere cavity which had been made within the width of the thick turret wall.

The cavity was not empty, it was filled with bones, not random, scattered bones but with a complete, small skeleton. A child, still alive, or accidentally dead, must have been crammed into this tiny space. The knees were drawn up to rest where the chin would have been, and where now there was a grinning skull. The arms, every bone of them intact, still reached forwards and cradled the knees. Fingers, feet, ears, teeth, every bone of every part of the body was there, and in its proper place.

Magnus stepped back in horror. This was surely another “Little Ease”, that torment devised by torturers which he had seen on display in The London Dungeon, a tiny prison where the victim was similarly stuffed into the tiniest possible space, locked up, and left to die.

He hoped, with all his heart, that the child's body had been sealed here
after
death, by frightened servants, perhaps, desperate to conceal the truth from Lady Neale. Surely nobody would have devised this living death for a little child who could not learn his letters and who blotched his books? He stepped back from the cavity, stood quite still and closed his eyes. The pain of
this was almost too much for one person to bear. He had become William Neale.

But he knew there was somebody else in the tower room with him as he suffered there, even though it was nobody he could see, and a feeling passed into him from that invisible presence, passed into him and gave him unexpected comfort, a feeling that was not fear but something more like grief.