The Shivering Sands (35 page)

Then she shook her head. “No, she can’t come back. She’s dead, poor child. I know it.”

“You can’t be sure,” I repeated.

“Strange things are happening in this house,” she went on. “Don’t you feel it?”

I shook my head.

“You aren’t telling the truth, Mrs. Verlaine. You
do
feel it. You’re sensitive. I know it. I shall put it in my picture when I paint it. Strange things
are
going on…and you know it.”

“I wish…oh how I wish Edith would come back!”

“She would if she could. She was always so meek and would do what people wanted. You know what’s happened, don’t you…to William?”

“He’s very ill, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, and all because he came to see who was playing.”

“He knew I was playing.”

“Oh no he did not, Mrs. Verlaine. That’s where you’re wrong. He thought it was someone else.”

“How could he? I play to him often.”

“He chooses the music for you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I know. He chooses the pieces he likes to hear, pieces which remind him of pleasant things. And now because of what happened Napier will stay. I believe Napier would have had to go but for what had happened. So what is good for Napier is bad for Sir William. One man’s meat, so they say, is another’s poison. Oh how true! How true! Listen to the rain. It rained on St. Swithin’s Day. You know what that means, Mrs. Verlaine. Forty days and forty nights it will rain now…and all because it rained on St. Swithin’s Day.”

She snuffed out the candles. “I like the gloom,” she said. “It fits everything doesn’t it? Tell me what piece you were playing when Sir William came to the doorway.”

“
Danse Macabre
.”

She shivered. “The Dance of Death. Well, it was nearly, wasn’t it? For Sir William. It’s an eerie piece of music. Did you think it was strange that he should have chosen it?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You would have thought it more strange if you had known it was the last thing Isabella played that day. She sat at the piano all morning and she played it over and over again. And William said: ‘For God’s sake stop playing that mournful thing!’ And she stopped and she went out into the woods and shot herself. It’s never been played in this house since…until you sat at the piano and played it.”

“It was in the music he set for me to play for him.”

“Yes, but he didn’t put it there.”

“Oh! Then who did?”

“That’s what would tell us a great deal. It was someone who wanted Sir William to hear it…to think that it was Isabella come back to haunt him. It was someone who hoped he’d get up from that chair and see you playing there…because it was dark, wasn’t it…as dark as it is now. It was someone who wanted him to fall down and hurt himself. It was someone who wanted to tell him that they knew.”

“Who could do such a thing? It was cruel.”

“Crueler things have been done in this house. Who do you think would do it? It might have been someone who was afraid of being sent away, and who wouldn’t be if Sir William were dead—because he might have died, you know. Then on the other hand it might have been someone else.”

I was deeply disturbed. I wanted her to leave, that I might be alone with my thoughts.

She seemed to sense this. In any case she had said what she had come to say.

“How can we be sure, Mrs. Verlaine?” she asked.

And shaking her head sadly she went to the door.

Sylvia came to her lessons with her two plaits wound round her head—a concession to growing up. Good heavens, I thought, is her mother really trying to catch Godfrey Wilmot as a husband for her daughter? Poor Sylvia, she looked most self-conscious. In fact she almost always was. She gave me the impression that she had been sent to do something unpleasant and would know no peace until she had done her duty.

She was sixteen—another year before she reached that age which was the conventional one for putting up the hair.

She went through her lesson in a parrot-like way. What could I say? Only: “Try to get a little more expression into it Sylvia. Try to feel what the music is
saying
.”

She looked puzzled. “But it doesn’t
say
anything, Mrs. Verlaine.”

I sighed. Really, I thought, now that Edith was gone my job was not worth doing. I could have made a competent pianist of Edith, someone to enchant the guests who came to her parties. I could have taught her to draw comfort and great pleasure from music—but Sylvia, Allegra and Alice…

Her hands were in her lap, those rather spatulate fingers with the nails painfully trying to grow. Even now she lifted her hand to her lips and dropped it hastily tasting in time the bitter aloes which her mother made her use.

“The trouble is, Sylvia, that you are too absentminded. You’re not thinking of your music. You’re thinking of something else.”

Her face lightened suddenly. “I was thinking of a horrible story Alice wrote. You know she’s always writing stories. Mr. Wilmot says her essays show real talent. Alice says she wants to write stories like Wilkie Collins…the sort that make you shiver.”

“She must show me some of her stories. I’d like to see them.”

“She reads them to us sometimes. We have to sit by the light of one candle in her room and she does the actions. It’s frightening. She could be an actress too. But she says what she wants most is to write about people.”

“What was this story?”

“It’s about a girl who disappears. No one knows where she’s gone. But just before she disappeared someone dug a hole in a copse which was near the house where she lived. There were some children who saw the hole in the copse. They nearly fell into it when they were playing and they came and watched and they saw a man. He saw them watching and he said that he was digging a trap to catch a man-eating lion because there were lions in this place. But they didn’t believe him because people don’t dig traps for lions, they shoot them. Of course he could only say that to the children but to pretend to the grown-ups, he said he was going to help someone dig up his fields. But he murdered the girl and buried her in the copse and everyone thought she had run away with her lover.”

“It’s not a very healthy sort of story,” I said.

“It makes your hair stand on end,” said Sylvia.

It was certainly making mine do so because I had suddenly remembered seeing Napier come into the stables with gardening tools. He had been helping Mr. Brancot to dig his garden, he had said.

When I next rode out alone I turned my horse toward the Brancots’ cottage. The garden looked neater than it had when I last saw it. I pulled up and stood looking at it.

I was fortunate, for while I was trying to think of an excuse for calling, old Mr. Brancot came out of the house.

“Good afternoon,” I said.

“Good afternoon, Miss.”

“It’s Mrs. Mrs. Verlaine. I’m the music teacher, up at Lovat Stacy.”

“Oh aye. I’ve heard of you. How are you liking this part of the country?”

“I find it very beautiful.”

He nodded, well pleased. “Wouldn’t want to leave it,” he said. “Not if you paid me a hundred pounds for doing it.”

I replied that I had no intention of doing so either and added that his garden was looking in good shape.

“Oh yes,” he answered, “it’s looking fine now.”

“Much better than when I last saw it. It’s been dug over since then.”

“Dug over and planted,” he said. “Easy to keep in order now.”

“It must have been a big job. Did you do it all yourself?”

He grinned and whispered: “Well, between you and me, I had a little help. You won’t believe it but one afternoon Mr. Napier came out and gave me a hand.”

I felt ridiculously happy. I was terrified that he had been going to say he had done it himself.

As I rode back the conversation with Sylvia kept recurring to me. The girls, naturally, were interested in everything that went on and because—being in that in-between stage, neither grown-up nor children—they saw through immature eyes, they did not always interpret correctly. Why had Alice written such a story? How far did imagination feed on facts? Was it possible that she
had
seen someone digging a hole in the copse? Or had Alice imagined it? Perhaps she—or one of the girls—had seen Napier coming back to the house with the gardening tools. That would be enough to fire Alice’s imagination; and because of the ruin in the copse and the light which had been seen there, the place had become one of mystery. Someone digging in the copse? Digging what? The imagination immediately supplied the answer: a grave.

Was this how Alice had worked it out? Did she feel she should make this known, and was she afraid to? She was, I believed, a timid child. I felt certain that her mother had impressed upon her the need for good behavior that they both might keep their places at Lovat Stacy. Allegra was constantly reminding Alice of her inferior position as the housekeeper’s daughter and of the necessity of not making herself troublesome. Unkind Allegra! And yet she, too, was unsure of her position, so I suppose one should not judge her too harshly.

I made up my mind that Alice had seen Napier with the gardening tools, had felt it her duty to put this on record, but was afraid of giving offense, so she wrote a story which was largely imagination, but which did say something of what she felt should be said. Alice wanted to do the right thing which was to tell what she knew; but as it was only a suspicion she dared not mention it openly. That was the answer.

But suppose Edith
was
buried in the copse. And Roma? Where was Roma? They had to be somewhere.

If someone had dug a grave in the copse, wouldn’t there be some sign of it? The grass would not be properly grown, so surely it should not be difficult to find a patch of newly disturbed earth.

This was becoming not only sinister but gruesome. I remembered Mrs. Lincroft’s somewhat oblique warning. Don’t interfere. Interference could put
you
into danger.

Edith had been murdered, and if her murderer was aware of my determination to discover him, then
I
was in danger. But I could not help it. I must find the answer.

Having reached the copse I dismounted and tied my horse to a tree.

I looked about me. How still it was! How eerie! But was that because of its associations? Through the trees I could glimpse the gray ruin and instinctively I moved toward it.

The sun glinted through the trees throwing a shifting pattern on the ground. I thought once more: Surely if the earth had been disturbed recently it would show.

I stared down at the grass which grew patchily.

If one wanted to dig a grave this would be an ideal place to dig it. Here one would be hidden among the trees and perhaps hear the footsteps of anyone approaching. And if one were seen with the spade in one’s hand? “Oh, I have just been digging for someone who is unable to dig for himself…”

“No!” I said and was surprised that I had spoken vehemently and aloud.

As I drew level with the ruins I put out a hand and gingerly touched those stone walls. One day I promised myself when the light shows I’ll come down and see who is playing that little trick.

I went through the gap in the stones where the door had been and stood there looking up at the sky through the damaged roof. My footsteps made a light noise on the broken tiled floor and the sound startled me. Yes, even by daylight I was a little frightened.