The Silence (24 page)

The figure paused at the far end of the outbuildings, as if scanning the gardens. Nell could see the two doors into the buildings and a black gaping oblong where a third door might once have been. She ran towards it, aware beneath her panic that she should get help – try to find Sergeant Howe, try to phone Michael. But if the woman had got Beth in that tumbledown place she could not waste a minute. And Esmond? How benevolent was Esmond?

She reached the outbuildings, took a deep breath, and went in. The dimness closed round her and she called to Beth again, but her voice only echoed mockingly and maddeningly. Beth could not be here – she would have called out. But what if she was injured – knocked out? Nell’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness now, and she could see an inner door with a grille near the top. This was where Samuel Burlap had been that night; this was what he had seen. There were the bolts he had talked about, one halfway down, the other near the top. Nell glanced back at the garden, then pulled at the door. It was heavy, but it opened with a protesting screech of old hinges, and stale air gusted out.

‘Beth? Are you in here? Are you all right? Is Esmond—’

There was a rush of movement behind her, and a pair of hard, bony hands pushed her with such force she fell forwards, into the fetid darkness. Before she could scramble to her feet, the door was slammed hard, and there was the sound of the thick bolts being drawn.

Nell threw herself against the door at once, beating on it with her fists, but aware that the bolts were holding firm. She shouted to be let out, but there was only the fractured laugh she had heard earlier, and then the impression of someone standing on the other side of the grille – someone who was in that outer room, and someone who might have been spun from the shadows and the dusky cobwebs, but who was sufficiently substantial to shut out most of the faint light that trickled in. Mad eyes, with no sanity or humanity in them, stared at her and Nell recoiled.

‘Let me out!’ shouted Nell, almost hysterical with panic for herself and for Beth to whom anything might be happening. But there was only the sound of the laugh again, this time with a thread of triumph in it. Then the outline vanished – was the figure now turning its attention to Beth? The panic spiralled up but Nell fought it, because panicking would not help Beth. With the vanishing of her captor, a few threads of light had trickled into the terrible room, and Nell inspected it as much as she could. A chair and a table, both clearly very old and both half rotten. Nothing else. And there was no way she could see of getting out of this room, other than through the bolted door. But someone would look for her – of course someone would. Michael would miss her and surely Stilter House would be the first place he would check. And Sergeant Howe was supposed to be around as well. Yes, she would be found sooner or later. But supposing it was later? Supposing it was too late for Beth?

She looked back at the door. The surface bore long gouges in the wood. Exactly as if someone had been imprisoned here and had tried to claw a way out. The gouges were deep and they covered a wide area of the door. As if the unknown prisoner had been shut in here for a very long time.

Michael was not exactly worried when Nell and Beth were not at The Pheasant, but he was slightly surprised. It was not like Nell to be late, and she and Beth had only been taking a look round the village.

He checked his phone for messages. There was one from the Director of Music at Oriel College, saying what a very positive, profitable meeting he thought they had had, and asking if Michael might be able to let him have some notes about the Romantic Poets and their influence on music fairly soon. For the last two days Michael had been so deep in Caudle’s past and the story of Isobel Acton and Samuel Burlap, he had to think for a minute what the Director was talking about.

There was a second message, this time from his editor, saying they would like to bring forward the new Wilberforce book so as to have it in the shops in time for Christmas. With that in mind, could Michael send a fairly detailed synopsis so they could brief the illustrators? Michael began to feel somewhat beleaguered, and wondered if he could really manage to serve two masters – three if you counted Oriel College itself, which he should certainly do.

But there was nothing from Nell on the voicemail, so he sat down in The Pheasant’s small oak-panelled snug, which overlooked the street, and drank a cup of tea, expecting to see her and Beth any minute. But by half past four there was still no sign of them, so Michael asked if they were in their room.

‘No, and the key’s still here,’ said a youngish girl who was manning the bar-cum-reception. ‘Is Mrs West’s car outside?’

Michael had not thought of that. He checked and discovered the car was not there. This was puzzling but not very worrying. Nell might have gone anywhere and been delayed by traffic or by something mundane like a puncture. And the phone signal was so unreliable out here she might not have been able to phone. He tried her number but it went straight to voicemail. He went back inside and watched the clock crawl round to ten to five. By this time the puzzlement was giving way to something less comfortable. Might Nell have gone out to Stilter House? She had packed everything up this morning and put it in her car, but supposing she had forgotten something? He contemplated this possibility, and his mind turned up two separate, but equally sinister, facts. The first was Emily West saying she was uneasy for Nell, but especially for Beth. ‘Because if Esmond is still there,’ she had written, ‘thwarted of Brad he may turn his attention to Brad’s daughter.’

The second was Michael’s own experience of seeing the unreal face looking through the grille in the tumbledown outbuildings, along with the certainty that someone had been standing close to him. He set down his tea cup and went back to the reception desk.

‘I’m going out to Stilter House to see if Mrs West is there,’ he said. ‘Could you . . .’ He stopped. It would be melodramatic in the extreme to say, ‘If I’m not back in an hour send out a search party,’ so he simply, said, ‘Would you tell Mr Poulson where I’ve gone? I don’t think I’ll be long.’ Poulson, knowing a little of what had been going on at that house, would surely be alerted if Michael or Nell were not back by around six.

Nell had no idea how much time had passed since the door was slammed. She had tried to break through it again, but had only succeeded in scraping what felt like half the skin off her hands. Was there any other means of escape? How about the ceiling, where it joined the walls? If there was a weakness anywhere it would be there. Could she knock through that? The ceiling was not high, but it was too high to reach from the ground so she dragged the chair across, but when she placed one foot on the seat, the rotten framework gave way and her foot went straight through. Nell swore, and turned her attention to the table. It would not matter if the thing collapsed under her, and it would not matter if she cut her hands to ribbons if it meant she got out and reached Beth.

The table was small and quite heavy, but Nell managed to drag it over to the wall, and pushed it against the timbers. So far so good. She was about to scramble onto it when she had the impression of slight movement near the door. She turned sharply, but there was nothing there, and she would have heard anyone unbolting the door. But there was something . . . Nell stood still, slow horror stealing over her.

Near the door something was moving. It was as if something was picking up the shadows and twisting them into an outline – as if long fleshless fingers were reaching down and gathering up the strings of darkness and decay to weave a human carapace.

There was a moment when the clotted shadows seemed to be fighting whatever was spinning them. Even the darkness doesn’t like whatever this is, thought Nell, wildly. I’m not believing any of this – it’s the light, it’s some kind of disturbance of the dust because I’ve been stamping around . . .

But something was in here. Against the old door with its sinister nail marks something was struggling to take shape, using the darkness and the ancient cobwebs and the rotten spores clinging to the walls.

Nell snatched up a piece of the broken chair, which would at least provide a weapon, although this was absurd because when was a physical weapon ever any good against a ghost? Even if one believed in ghosts in the first place.

And then, like a bad connection finally sparking, or the pixels on a computer photograph clicking into place, the woman was there. The ravaged-faced creature of rain and darkness and ancient cobwebs. The woman who had stared through the windows of Stilter House, and who had stalked Nell and Beth through the dripping gardens, carrying with her a lump of twisted iron with spikes.

She was carrying it now. As Nell backed into the corner, ready to strike out with the piece of wood, the woman began slowly to walk towards her. Anne-Marie Acton, thought Nell, her emotions tumbling. Is that who this is? She swore never to leave until she had recalled Simeon. Can she really be still here, though? I really don’t believe any of this.

The figure held up the piece of iron, and the vagrant memory that had nudged Nell’s mind two nights earlier, finally fell into place. With sudden horrified understanding she knew what the brutal iron shape was.

I
t was still light as Michael drove along the narrow lanes, but the sky was overcast and streaked with thin purple veins. It occurred to him that Caudle Moor had a remarkable talent for setting a scene.

He reached the house and with relief saw Nell’s car. It looked fine – but it was possible it had refused to start and Nell and Beth had had to walk somewhere to get help. Or would they still be in the house? He went up to the front door first, and plied the knocker, willing Nell to appear. But she did not and Michael glared at the lock, which was a Yale, and therefore impossible to open from outside without the key.

He went around the side of the house. Here was the window that had been open last night – the window Nell and Beth had climbed through. It was shut now and all the other windows were shut. He tried the side kitchen door, which was locked. What about the French windows of the music room? He went around to the back of the house, and he had reached the moss steps when he heard the sound he had heard on his first visit. Soft, light piano music. Michael stood very still, the music jabbing little pinpricks of fear across his skin, then went forward. The French windows stood open and the faded curtains and thin gauzy stuff beneath them stirred slightly in the cool air. Michael took a deep breath, then went inside.

For a moment he thought he was seeing again the small shadowy figure from two nights ago – that it was the lost, long-ago Esmond who sat at the piano, rapt in the music. Then the figure looked up, and Beth said, ‘Michael? Wow, you made me jump. I didn’t know you were coming here. Is Mum with you?’

Speaking lightly so as not to alarm her, Michael said, ‘I thought I might as well come out to the house. I haven’t seen your mum yet. Is she around?’

Beth twisted round on the piano stool to look into the gardens with a faint air of puzzlement. ‘Well, she was here,’ she said. ‘Only I whizzed into the garden and I thought she followed me, but then I saw she hadn’t, so I came back in here to wait. I’m getting really good at this piece. Shall I play it for you? It’s Chopin. It’s called a Nocturne.’

‘Let’s find Mum first,’ said Michael. ‘Why did you whizz into the gardens?’

‘Oh, because . . .’ Beth stopped, guiltily. ‘Um, well, actually, Esmond was here, and I went in the garden with him. I told you about Esmond, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you emailed,’ said Michael. ‘Where did he go?’

‘Home, I s’pose. I don’t know where he lives, but I think it’s quite near. I just went to the edge of the gardens with him. Down there,’ said Beth, indicating vaguely through the windows. ‘He doesn’t like it if people don’t say goodbye when they go away, so we played this duet as a kind of goodbye thing. Then we walked through the gardens, and he went and I came back here.’

‘I see,’ said Michael, concealing his unease. ‘Listen, Beth, I’ll find your mum, then we’ll all go back to The Pheasant, yes?’

‘OK. Shall I stay here while you get her?’

‘Yes. Keep playing so I can hear you,’ said Michael, thinking if he could hear Beth’s unmistakable playing he would know she was all right.

He looked in all the ground-floor rooms, then, calling to Beth that he would check upstairs, went up to the bedrooms. He paused in the child’s bedroom, looking around. On the old desk was a copy of
The Water Babies.
Esmond’s book, thought Michael. The book where Brad West left that letter. It had the carefully drawn jacket of its era, and inside were a number of the exquisite and faintly macabre illustrations the Victorians had thought suitable for children’s stories. Michael hesitated, then thrust the book in his pocket and went up to check the attics, which were wrapped in their own brooding silence. Silence House, Ralph West had called this place. Silence from the Dutch word
stilte
. Because Esmond must be kept in silence.

The diligent piano playing was still going on when he got back downstairs, but Beth heard him and came out to the hall.

Michael said, ‘Beth, can you show me where Esmond went? Just the general direction?’

‘Of course I can.’

Beth led him confidently through the French windows and down the moss steps. And now, thought Michael, following her, she’ll go to the outbuildings.

But Beth did not. She went through the shrubbery with the old trees dipping their branches to form a green shadowy tunnel – enough of them to just about warrant being called an orchard. In Esmond’s day – probably in Brad’s, as well – the apples would have scented the air, and in spring they would have frothed their blossom against the sky.

This looked like the edge of Stilter’s land. There was a thick hedge and several sections of rather dilapidated brick wall, low enough to see fields beyond, and one or two houses in the distance.

‘This is the way Esmond goes? Over the wall?’ And then over the hills and far away, thought Michael. Or is it over hill, over dale, through bush through briar, through blood, through fire . . .? Why would I think about fire?