The Silence (14 page)

Whoever this was seemed to be standing between Michael and the outer door – he could just make out a dark blurred shadow. Male? Female? The thought of a tussle in the pitch dark was so daunting that Michael backed away to the bolted door with the grille and, tying to keep his eyes on the shadowy shape, he fumbled for the nearer of the two bolts. It resisted at first, then slid back with a screech of sound, and his hands felt for the second one. That, too, stuck, then yielded.

The shadow seemed to flinch at the sounds and Michael pushed the inner door open. He had no idea what would happen, but surely the freed woman would be on his side if it came to a fight.

The inner room was empty. Faint threads of light slanted down from where the roof had partly fallen in – more than sufficient light to see that there was no one here. Or was there? Michael looked uneasily into the corners. Did the crouching shadows hide something? But his eyes were adjusting to the dimness now, and he could see that there was nowhere for anyone to hide. But I saw her, he thought, puzzled.

This room was somewhat larger than the outer one. It had stone walls, and it was just possible to see a rotting table and chair pushed against the far wall. A length of old chain lay beneath the table, thickly covered with dust and grime. Could that be used as a weapon in the event of an attack?

It might be possible to break out through the damaged roof, but not without a noisy struggle. And Michael was not going to stay in a room where the door could be slammed and bolted from the outside. Moving as quickly as he could in the dimness, he went back to the outer room. And this time he knew, in the indefinable way the human brain does know, that there was no one here except himself. Whoever or whatever had stood watching from the door had gone. He drew in a sigh of relief, and turned his attention to getting out. The door was still a seamless slab of wood, but he found the hinges and tried to snap them off. At the first attempt the rusty edges cut into his palm, so he wrapped the edge of his jacket around his hand and tried again. To begin with he thought he was not going to manage it, then quite suddenly the old metal broke away from the frame and the door sagged slightly. Encouraged, Michael attacked the second hinge which, loosened by the fracture of the other one, came off almost at once. The door fell outwards, crashing onto the ground. The sound reverberated through the gardens, splinters of rubble flew upwards, and scatterings of earth showered everywhere.

Michael dived out of the noisome stone room, and ran across the gardens towards the house. He expected to see or hear signs of life – they would surely have heard the crash – and he was getting ready to call out that there was nothing to worry about, but the house remained dark and still. A prickle of new anxiety jabbed at his mind, because whatever he had seen, or thought he had seen in that bolted and barred inner room, he had certainly seen someone run across the garden, and someone had shut him in that stone building.

He walked around the house, intending to knock loudly on the front door – always supposing he could find it. The rain had stopped and a watery moon was shedding enough light for him to find his way around the side. Halfway along was a wrought-iron gate, and Michael realized he was on the side furthest from the drive. It was then he saw, just before the gate, a window, wide open, and jutting out at right angles to the wall. No one would leave a ground floor window open at this time of night, not when it was pelting down with rain. Nell certainly would not, particularly not in someone else’s house.

There were footprints in the wet ground directly underneath the window. Did they indicate that someone had got in or that someone had got out? Michael could not tell, but when he looked into the room, he could see two or three pieces of heavy-looking furniture pushed up against the door. Barricades? His mind instantly saw Nell and Beth taking refuge in this room, (from who? from what?), piling up the cupboard and the settle to stop someone getting in. And then climbing out of the window and fleeing for safety?

His first instinct was to run back to his car and phone the police, but he remembered the lack of a signal. He would have to investigate on his own: he could not risk any delay. Abandoning the original idea of openly knocking on the door, he grasped the window sill and swung himself over it. As he dropped down into the room, Stilter House’s darkness and its scents closed around him. But woven into the darkness was the thin fragile music he had heard earlier. Michael stood still, listening. The music might actually mean Nell or Beth had a radio on, in which case there was nothing to worry about. But it’s not a radio, said his mind. It’s someone playing the piano.

Crossing to the door, he called out, ‘Nell? Beth? It’s me – Michael.’

His voice did not echo as it had done in the stone building, but there was a hollow ring to it, as if he was calling into an empty house. Only it could not be empty, because of the music. He began dragging the cupboard and the settle clear of the door. When he paused once to listen, he could hear the music still playing. But surely the pianist must have heard him? Wouldn’t whoever it was come in here to investigate? He focused on getting the settle clear of the door, and opened it.

Beyond the room was a wide dim hall, with several doors opening off it and a narrow passage leading to the back. There was a stairway, winding up into darkness. Michael called out again, willing Nell to answer, but the only sound was the music. It was coming from a room near the front; the door was slightly open. He went towards it, trying not to think the soft sound of creeping footsteps followed him or that the faint rustlings were anything other than the ordinary sounds of an old house.

To chase these sounds away, he called out again. ‘Hello? Someone here?’ This struck him as an outstandingly stupid thing to say, because of course there was someone here. ‘I got in through the window,’ said Michael, which sounded even more absurd, and before he could succumb to real fear, pushed the door of the room wide and stepped inside.

It was filled with swirling shadows, but he could see the piano clearly enough at the far end, near a curtained window. What he could also see clearly was the small figure seated at it. He started to say, ‘Beth?’ then stopped, because even through the dimness he could see this was not Beth. It was a boy of about Beth’s age, and whoever he was, he did not, at first, seem to have heard Michael come in; he continued to play, leaning forward to read the music, frowning with the effort of concentration. Michael stayed where he was, watching, and the boy played a few more bars, then faltered and looked up. His eyes widened – disconcertingly they were Beth’s eyes – then he darted across the room towards the curtained windows behind the piano. The folds of the fabric stirred slightly and he was gone.

Michael went after him at once, banging into things in the dark, knocking over a small table, but reaching the window within seconds. He dragged at the heavy curtains, pulling them back, revealing an old-fashioned French window. Then the boy had gone out through that, although he had done it so silently and swiftly . . .

Except that he could not have done. There was a key in the lock of the French window and it was not just locked, it was also bolted at the top. Michael looked at the two panes of glass flanking the French window; they were long and narrow, with heavy leaded lights criss-crossing the entire panes. Neither had any kind of opening hinge or handle and certainly no one could have got through them. It was a version of the old conundrum in a whodunnit – the room with the murder victim and the door locked from the inside.

He peered through the glass, shading the reflection with his hand, trying to see into the gardens, but if any more spectral figures flitted across the gloaming, he could not see them.

Well, Great-Aunt Charlotte West, thought Michael, turning back to look round the room, your house certainly has some surprises. I suppose I ought to be thoroughly spooked – in fact I think I ought to be downright terrified, because at the latest count I’ve seen three figures, two of whom could certainly be called wraithlike, and one small boy who poured ethereal music into the house, then disappeared.

Esmond. The name was already in his mind, of course. Was it Esmond he had just seen?
Esmond never left Stilter House,
Emily West had said on the phone.
And Beth is so very like Brad was at that age.

If Michael was going to be spooked by anything in this house, he thought it would be Esmond. Was Esmond here now, hiding somewhere in this dark silent house? Oh for pity’s sake, said his mind crossly, and on this heartening note of anger he went back into the hall. There was just enough light to make a brief check everywhere, but the moonlight drained the colour from the rooms, and Michael felt as if he had stepped backwards into an old black-and-white film – something from the 1930s, perhaps. Charlotte West’s youth, would that be?

Whether the elusive boy had been Esmond or not, he did not seem to be around, but Michael did not have the sense of a completely empty house. He took a deep breath and went determinedly into all the rooms, making as much noise as he could. But there was only the gentle imprint left by an old lady’s long occupation and the faint mustiness of a closed-up house, here and there overlaid with a drift of old-fashioned polish and the scent of stored apples in the kitchen. But there
is
something more, thought Michael. Is it Esmond, after all?

In the room with the barricade he found several sheets with Nell’s writing on. Clearly she had sat in here to make out a draft inventory of the house’s contents. But then what had happened?

By now he was as sure as he could be that Nell and Beth were not here – Nell’s car had not been outside and there was that open window. If they had seen the boy in the music room, or the nightmare figure in the stone outbuilding it was no wonder they had made a hasty retreat. But he had to make absolutely certain, and without pausing to think too much, he went upstairs. The bedrooms were all empty, most of them furnished with rather heavy old-fashioned wardrobes and tallboys. In a big bedroom overlooking the side garden with the wrought-iron gate were signs of occupancy: a sleeping bag on the two beds, and a sweater Michael recognized as Nell’s over a chair. In a smaller bedroom were shelves of old books and neatly stacked games and jigsaw puzzles. Had this been Brad West’s room when he stayed here? Had he sat at the desk by the window and written that extraordinary composition which Emily had sent to Nell?

Esmond always waits for me in the piano room
, Brad had written.
He doesn’t like being around when the grown-ups are there.

With the memory of those words something seemed to brush past Michael in the quiet room – something that was unbearably sad and heartbreakingly lonely. In a soft questioning voice, he said, ‘Esmond?’ and waited. For a moment he thought the silence was faintly disturbed by a faraway bar of music, so tenuous it barely thrummed on the air. Then there was nothing, and he thought after all it had only been the old house creaking in the cool night air.

He glanced into the large, slightly old-fashioned bathroom, and into a linen cupboard, and found nothing. Attics? But he could not see any stairs that might lead upwards, and any attics that might crouch under the roof would be as dark as the Stygian rivers.

He went back downstairs. There
was
something here, but it was keeping out of sight. As if drawn by an invisible thread, Michael went back to the music room. He would not have been surprised to see that small figure again, intent on the keys, but there was nothing, although the piano lid was open, and a tapestry-covered stool was drawn up to it. Michael saw now that a music score was propped on the stand, which he had not noticed earlier. He hesitated, then picked it up. Even in this light it was yellow with age, but at the top were the words ‘Chopin’s Nocturnes for Piano’ in thick bold italics, with the name of the publisher beneath. Above this, in faded writing, was the name ‘Esmond’. Then you really are still here, thought Michael, and putting the music score into his pocket he closed the door on the room. He made sure the open window was shut, then let himself out through the main front door which had a standard Yale lock, and slammed it firmly closed behind him.

As he got into his car and drove back along Gorsty Lane to Caudle village, he was trying to remember if he had seen a police sign in Caudle village, because if Nell and Beth were not at The Pheasant, Michael would call out the whole of the Derbyshire County Police Force to find them. But surely they would be at The Pheasant, surely if they had fled Stilter House, for whatever reason, they would have taken a room there, rather than drive home at this hour? And if anything had happened to them there would have been signs of a struggle in the house.

Here was the turn onto the main street, and a little way along the street were the sign and lights of The Pheasant. Would it still be open? Would they let him in? It was only just on half past eleven; he realized with incredulity that he had only been inside Stilter House for forty minutes or so.

But when he turned onto The Pheasant’s small car park he saw, with overwhelming relief, Nell’s car at the far end, parked neatly and tidily, not as if she had been in a particular hurry or in a panic or injured. Michael sent up a prayer of thanks to whatever god might be most appropriate, parked alongside, and went up to the door.

It was locked, but lights showed at the downstairs windows, and when he rang the bell a plump, pleasant-faced gentleman opened up and enquired, in an amiable tone, how he could help.

Michael said, ‘I’m sorry it’s so late, but – is Mrs West staying here? And her daughter?’

‘Indeed they are here, sir,’ said the man.

Michael just managed not to sag against the door frame with relief. He said, ‘You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that.’

‘Did you want a room for yourself?’

‘If it isn’t too late. And if you’ve got one. If you haven’t,’ said Michael, ‘I’ll happily sleep on a sofa or in a linen cupboard.’