The Empty Frame (7 page)

Magnus said impatiently, “It doesn't matter about the name. Why are the flowers important?”

“Because the Lady Alice Neale is always distressed by them. Did Cousin Maude tell you about the eve of the conference?”

“No,” Floss and Magnus said in chorus.

“Well, about this time last year, an international company booked the Abbey for a conference. It was great news for the Colonel. It meant a lot of money – he'd been having a very difficult time. Well, the evening it began, they left their business papers in the Great Hall which had been set out as the conference room. Maude had put floral arrangements on each of the tables and she'd used the peony flowers, because the garden was full of them. When they'd all gone to dine in the Solar – the lower dining room with the river view, you'll have seen it perhaps – the Great Hall was locked up for the night. They'd left their official papers there and one or two had left their briefcases, ready for the morning session. When Wilf unlocked the door next morning, at about eight-thirty, somebody had been in there, and caused havoc. Two of the briefcases had been cut into pieces and all the official papers had been torn up.”

“And what about the peony flowers?” said Magnus.

“Every single arrangement had been thrown to the ground and the vases smashed to smithereens and—”

But Floss, who had been silent until now, interrupted. “And the flowers had been ripped off their stems and pulled to pieces, petal by petal. Is that what had happened?”

Miss Adeline leaned forward and peered into her face. “My dear Florence, that is
exactly
right. How do you know so precisely?”

“Because that's what had been done to the flowers Cousin M put in the fireplace, in our dormitory.”

“Did you lock your door before retiring?”

“No. There isn't a key.”

“Well, the Great Hall was most definitely locked,” said Miss Adeline.

Magnus said thoughtfully, “So the Lady Alice is sometimes violent?”

“Yes. She's a poltergeist, I suppose, an unquiet spirit who causes havoc.”

“But… but she's not mischievous, is she?” Magnus speculated, “I mean, she doesn't indulge in mischief for its own sake?” He'd suddenly thought of all those loops and tangles in Maude's garden hose but decided not to mention them. It seemed trivial. “It must be something to do with the boy, mustn't it, if he's the one holding the flower in the painting?”

“Does she not
want
to be reminded of him any more?” said Floss. “Is that why she always destroys the flowers?”

“We don't know,” Miss Adeline said. “Is it the boy that she weeps for and is he her son? There are so many questions here and nobody can ever answer them. They can only guess.”

Magnus said, “Have you ever seen a ghost in the Abbey, Miss Adeline?”

She smiled at him and the smile made her look
uncannily young. “Well now, before we come to that, supposing you tell me what
you
have seen, first. I think that's fair. Age must have some privileges, you know, and I
am
going to give you afternoon tea.”

“I haven't seen anything,” Floss said, “honestly I haven't. But, like Magnus said, I was woken up last night by the sound of somebody crying, and so was Sam – Samuel. We both felt very cold, all of a sudden. Sam put some socks on.”

“Yes. It is always cold when she walks,” Miss Adeline said thoughtfully. “And you, Magnus, Magnus the Mighty One, what have you seen?”

Magnus flushed. “Are you making fun of me?” he said, “calling me that? You've got a funny name too, and I'm not making fun of you.” He didn't know what to make of this old lady. She was half-serious and half-mocking. Floss took in a sharp breath. Magnus could be so touchy and she didn't want Miss Adeline to take offence now, and send them away.

But the old lady inclined her head apologetically. “I'm sorry. Only, Magnus is such a marvellous name. Please don't be cross. I'm so enjoying this visit.”

Magnus remained silent for a few seconds then, taking his time, he told her about the two apparitions, about the figure in white that had had no feet, which had glided across the Council Chamber, and about what he thought he had seen through the window of
the swimming pool, that fleeting shape which he was sure must have been the woman in distress because he had heard her voice again.

“You didn't tell me about that, Mags,” Floss said, rather hurt. Why had he kept such an important thing private?

“Thought you might laugh,” he muttered. “Anyhow, I'm telling you now.”

Floss wanted to assure him that she would never, ever laugh at him, whatever he claimed to have seen. He was not fanciful and he was not a liar. Whatever Magnus told you, you believed. But Miss Adeline had started speaking again.

“What you saw in the Council Chamber,” she said, “the ghost that appears to be cut off at the ankles, has been seen many times and people have written accounts of it. I expect Colonel Stickley told you that they raised the floor in 1850, so that is the explanation of why the woman appears to have no feet. And there are several people who claim to have seen the empty frame. Also—”

“But the woman in the Council Chamber wore white,” interrupted Magnus, “a white dress with a black scarf thing, the other way round from the painting. Is it someone different?”

“We do not think so,” said Miss Adeline. “It's just that, when she leaves her frame, the colours are always reversed, like a photographic negative.”

“That's what Sam said,” muttered Magnus, his respect for Floss's tough, rather impatient older brother increasing considerably.

“Lady Alice does not like to be moved,” said the old lady. “We once let the painting go to London, to an exhibition. The night watchman, who sat up all night in the gallery where she'd been put on display, found the frame was empty, just like Magnus. He was terrified. He had to be transferred to another part of the building.”

“So there's only one ghost,” Magnus said. “Well, that's something. Anyhow, that's all I've seen. What about you?”

She smiled her whimsical young-girl smile again. “You're a persistent young man, Magnus, aren't you? Florence, please will you go through to the kitchen, the door's just behind you, and switch on the electric kettle. It always takes an age to boil. While it's heating up I'll tell you my side of things. But don't get excited. It's not much.”

“I'm not excited,” Magnus said, settling down on the squashy settee to listen. But his heart was thumping so loudly he thought Miss Adeline would surely hear.

“Well, I was born here, as you know, ninety-three years ago this June, as was my brother Maurice, five years before me. If he had not been killed he would have inherited the Abbey and it would still be in my family. But it was not to be. They say that Burst Belly, that gross Black Canon, put a curse on the place when Henry the Eighth sent him away. Well, there are all kinds of curses, it seems to me. Hideous unjust wars that kill brave young men are curses, and that's happened twice this century and deprived the Abbey of its heirs. And now David Stickley is dead, or so we have to believe. Another war has taken another heir.

“You ask me what I have seen here. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but you seem to have seen and heard more in twenty-four hours than I have in a lifetime. The fact is, I've seen nothing. But I've heard too much from people I consider very sensible not to believe that the Abbey isn't haunted by an unhappy spirit. Whether that unhappiness has caused so many of the sad things in its history I wouldn't know. But of course, I think about that possibility. We all do, all of us who love this place.

“My only
personal
experience of the Lady Alice Neale happened when I was about your age, Florence. Maurice had already gone to fight in the Great War and wounded soldiers were sent here, to recover from their injuries. The Solar and the adjoining rooms were turned into hospital wards and my mother organised nurses to look after them.”

She closed her eyes. “There were some terrible injuries, my dears. The young men were very brave but sometimes they cried out in pain. As I say, I was only a young girl but the nurses let me help them. I learned to dress wounds and to make poultices, and the patients liked me to bathe their faces with lavender water. We used lavender from the garden, the bushes are still there.

“One night, I thought I heard one of them cry out in pain. I was sleeping in my mother's bed, in a little room off the Solar. The noise didn't wake her but it woke me and I slipped out of the room to see who could be crying like that. I thought I might try to change a dressing myself, I was getting quite good at it – or perhaps the soldier just needed a cooling drink. It was very hot, rather like it is at the moment.

“When I got to the Solar all the men were fast asleep. I went to each bed in turn, just to check, but they were all sleeping so deeply it seemed to me impossible that any of them could have made the crying noise. But I
had
heard it, it had woken me up. In the end I went back to bed. A week later my mother received a telegram telling us that Maurice had been killed on the Somme. I never told her about the voice in the night but I worked out that I had heard it the night he died.”

She was still holding the two pictures, the framed photograph of her brother and the painting of the boy with the flower. As she clutched them against her, the children saw a tear trickle slowly down one cheek.

Nobody spoke for a while, then Floss said timidly, “Miss Adeline, do you really think the timing of that was significant? I mean, it might have been coincidence, mightn't it?”

“I don't think it was,” Magnus said firmly.

At first the old lady said nothing. “Could you reach for my handkerchief?” she eventually asked Floss. “It's in the pocket of my blouse. I can't seem to…” She was still clutching the two pictures. Floss found the hanky, a soft square of checked cotton, and gently dabbed at the papery cheeks.

“Thank you, dear. Let me go on. Yes, I think it probably was significant. The Lady Alice Neale seems to be mourning over some lost loved one. I think it is her son, and I think her son is this child, the little boy holding the flower. That night in 1916, when my brother lost his life, I believe that her mourning became ours, across the centuries. I suppose, in a way, she was
trying to communicate with me. And now, nearly a hundred years later, she is still in mourning, still not at rest. So many people, if they have not actually seen her, like Magnus, have heard the same voice.

‘
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased 

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow… 
'”

Her voice wavered, then ceased, and she stared sadly down at the knotted web her gnarled hands had made round the pictures.

“That's
Macbeth
,” Floss said in surprise.

“It is. Clever girl.”

“No, I'm not. Magnus seems to know the whole play off by heart. It's just that I'm trying to learn some of it, to get a part in a play at school. It's what the doctor says to Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth is sleep walking.”

“It is indeed. It's about guilt. It's about terrible deeds that prey on the mind and will not let you rest.”

Magnus was thinking hard about the face of the Lady Alice Neale. In the portrait it was hard and truculent, unforgiving, almost cruel, the face of a woman who might be capable of wicked things. And yet, the second time he had seen her, through the door at the swimming pool, he had seen other things in the face, traces of sorrow and regret under the stubborn exterior. He said, “But what is Lady Alice supposed to have
done
, Miss Adeline? What is it that she weeps about, after nearly four hundred years? Why is she guilty?”

“Well, there are all kinds of theories, some of them rather wild, but there is a very strong tradition that she killed one of her own sons, or at least, neglected him in some way that led to his death. As you know, there is no record of such a son or of such a death, there is no tomb, but the story has persisted for nearly four centuries, as you've just pointed out, and when a story really persists like that you begin to think there might be some truth behind it.”

“You mean ‘No smoke without a fire'?” suggested Magnus.

“That's one way of putting it. The Neale family were very clever people and that's historical fact. You can look it up. They produced all kinds of scholars and one or two high-powered diplomats, and they were very close to the king. They think that a Neale – possibly a brother of Lady Alice – tutored young Edward the Sixth, the son of Henry the Eighth, who died young. There's no hard evidence but there
is
evidence that Elizabeth the First spent some time at the Abbey and was friends with Lady Alice Neale.”

At this point she stopped abruptly. Then she said, “I think I can trust you, can't I?”

“Yes,” answered Magnus, stoutly. “You certainly can.” But Floss, wondering what on earth was coming next, did not answer. She was too excited.

“Florence, there's a tiny picture on the wall by that
window… no… have you got it? It's a piece of tapestry work in a frame. Bring it to me, will you?”

The cloth square was black silk, richly worked in gold, vine leaves and grapes, exquisitely embroidered, the detail so fine it looked as if it had been executed by fairy-tale mice in a story book.

“This relic has always been in our family,” said Miss Adeline. “And it is supposed to have come from a dress worn by Elizabeth the First, when she was at the Abbey. Now of course nobody can prove that, but if you go to the National Portrait Gallery in London you will see her wearing such a dress. What is one to make of it? I don't think I know.

“As I said, the Neales were clever people, the women as well as the men, but one son – if he existed at all – seems to have been a severe disappointment to his ambitious parents. He may have had what I believe you now call ‘learning difficulties', perhaps he just couldn't spell.”

“I can't spell,” Floss said quite belligerently. “It doesn't mean you're thick. It's just the way your brain works.”

“Oh, I know dear, and listen, good news. I can't spell, either. It must be in the family. You and I must be related, way back. He may have been, what's the word these days, dyslexic, or he could have been educationally sub-normal. Feeble-minded is how people
used to put it. Whatever the truth of the matter, such a child would have been a very great embarrassment in a distinguished and clever family like the Neales, especially one that was connected with royalty.

“This tradition is that his father, determined to make something of him, drove him very, very hard, that he was confined in a school room for long hours, to work over his books. A tutor – possibly the royal one, who would have been his uncle – seems to have intervened and pleaded for him, even tried to get him away from here, at night, through a tunnel under the river.”

“A
what
?” Floss interrupted. This was getting more and more fantastic. “Is the tunnel still there?” She noticed that Magnus had gone very silent, which was odd. She would have thought the existence of a tunnel might have sparked off more of his penetrating questions.

“Oh yes, I think so. I used to play in it, with Maurice. Hasn't Maude mentioned it? Well, I suppose she might not have done. I used to have a key… But let me get on with the story, I'm losing the thread. We don't know what happened to the tutor. The Neales were a determined and ambitious pair. They wouldn't have cared for a young whippersnapper interfering. They may well have got rid of him. Perhaps he gossiped, about their harsh methods with their son.”

“Who was in charge really?” asked Floss. “Do we know?”

“Well, no. The husband was very much older than the wife, she was only fifteen when he married her, and from his portrait – we don't have it in the Abbey, it's in a gallery in Edinburgh for some reason – he looks even tougher than she does, if you can imagine that. So perhaps she was very much under his influence. She was very, very young to be a mother. She may even have been frightened of him. Perhaps he beat her, as well as his children.”

“Please tell us what happened to the little boy, Miss Adeline,” said Magnus. Floss looked sharply at him because his voice sounded lost and curiously detached. He was doing his staring into space act again, his looking at nothing.

“Well, the boy disappeared and it was obviously a scandal at the time. That's why, if he existed at all, all records of him have been expunged, apart from this one picture which many believe to be his likeness and has been catalogued as William Neale. He's always referred to as William, by the way.”

“What happened to him?” repeated Magnus in the same dull voice, almost as if he didn't really want to know the answer.

“Well, everyone has their own theory. One is that he was locked in his room with his books and that he simply got forgotten. Perhaps his mother went riding in the woods, met the young Queen Elizabeth, and ended
up at Windsor for the night. It's not far from here. She was extremely grand after all, and she could have easily thought someone in the house was seeing to the child. Don't forget that it was a very large family and a very large house, and that there would have been dozens of servants. Such an aristocratic woman wouldn't have seen very much of her children. It just could have happened that way.

“Anyway, tradition has it – and that's all it is, tradition, we have no proof – that he was found dead, in a locked room, after three days, because nobody knew he was there. It really might have been an accident. They think terrified servants disposed of the body, but it's pure speculation. Nobody knows. Another theory, and the only other credible one, to me, is that she killed him herself, not deliberately of course, but through losing her temper. You only have to look at her to see that there's an awful lot of violence in her face, suppressed violence, the sort that's kept under control most of the time but can be really terrible if it ever breaks out. She could have become so infuriated with his stupidity that she boxed his ears rather too hard – you know, beat him about the head and caused a brain haemorrhage. Or perhaps they were both cruel to him, perhaps she did what she did under the husband's influence. It can happen you know… well it
has
happened. You only need open the newspaper to see
what terrible things people do to children – not always by accident, either. I personally think—”

But Floss interrupted. “Magnus?” she said. “Magnus? Are you all right?” and she turned in panic to the old lady. “Can you wait a minute, Miss Adeline, I don't think he's very well… 
Magnus
!”

But Magnus didn't hear her, or anyone. His head had begun to swim round, then there was a fine tingling sensation in his joints and he suddenly felt horribly nauseous. But before he could be sick he had crashed forwards in a dead faint.