The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery (17 page)

‘I'm very sorry, sir,' said the voice at the other end, ‘but we haven't shifted that tree at Fosse House yet. We've been too busy clearing the main road – it's been a wild old storm. We should get it done first light tomorrow, though. If I were you, I'd stay put.'

‘How far along the road is the tree? From Fosse House, I mean?'

‘Smack across the road about ten yards from the gate,' said the voice, lugubriously. ‘Blocking the road altogether.'

‘And how far is the village from the house? If I tried walking?'

‘Oh, you can't do that,' said the man at once. ‘It's a good ten miles, and in this weather— Well, you'd be drenched to the skin inside of ten minutes, and likely suffer pneumonia. You stay put is my advice, sir. The men'll be out there in the morning. But call us back if there are any problems. We'd get out to you if so. Motorbikes, you know. They can get round the tree all right.' Michael briefly considered asking if he could be provided with a pillion ride to the village, but decided against it. He thanked the man and rang off, wondering if he could risk trying to reach the village on foot. But it would mean walking along the dark lonely drive, and then along the equally dark, lonely road beyond it. All ten miles of it.

Leaving Fosse House did not seem to be an option, so Michael stopped thinking about it and instead contemplated the best way to pass the night. Should he seal himself in the library with crucifixes and garlic wreaths and all the panoply of the ghost-repellants of fiction, and wait for dawn which traditionally sent spirits fleeing? He had told Luisa that Stephen would not harm him, and he still believed that. But then he remembered again those dreadful hands reaching out of the shadows, and he no longer felt as sure.

It was at this point in his thoughts that the phone rang, and Michael, his nerves still on edge, jumped all over again. He reached for it, hoping it might be the police station calling back to say the road was unexpectedly clear after all.

But it was not. It was the hospital to which Luisa Gilmore had been taken. The ward sister he had spoken to earlier said she was extremely sorry to be giving him this bad news, but Miss Gilmore had died half an hour ago.

‘I'm afraid the damage to her heart was too severe. She had a second heart attack shortly after she got here. We tried all the usual methods to revive her, but we weren't able to.'

Michael had not expected to feel such an acute sense of loss. After a moment he said, ‘That's so sad. I'm very sorry indeed. I didn't know her very well, but—'

‘An unusual lady,' said the sister.

‘Yes.'

‘We have to focus on practicalities, I'm afraid,' she said. ‘We really do need to find next of kin or someone who has authority to – well, to act for her. To make arrangements.'

‘I'll see if I can find an address book,' said Michael. ‘Failing that, there must be someone local who will know.'

‘If you could ring us back as soon as possible,' she said.

‘Yes, of course.'

At first Michael thought he would phone Nell, and then he saw it was approaching midnight, and she would probably be in bed. And despite what she had said, it was a bit late to phone, especially with sad news. He would try to find the information the hospital needed instead. It might even focus his mind and drive back the spooks to make a search for an address book.

An address book … Or a diary?

Somewhat reluctantly, he took from his pocket the journal he had picked up in the underground room. Luisa wanted me to read this, he thought. She wanted me to understand, and she said she trusted me. And on a practical level, it might contain addresses or phone numbers of family.

But it still felt like the worst kind of intrusion, and it was some time before he could bring himself to open it. The pages were all handwritten, and as far as he could see the writing was all in the same hand. There did not appear to be any dates, and there certainly did not seem to be any names and addresses. He flattened it out on the desk, directly under the comforting light cast by the lamp.

He had intended to do no more than glance at the first few pages, after which he was going to steel himself to go up to Luisa's bedroom and look for a conventional address book. But the opening sentences of the diary acted like a magnet.

‘Today was a good day, because Leonora did not come …'

It seemed to be a journal, pure and simple, and it did not look if it was likely to contain what Michael was looking for. Unless you counted Leonora.

He turned a couple more of the pages.

‘Today I prayed for over an hour to keep Leonora at bay, but she came to me anyway … I wonder how much longer I can fight this … She feared the madness, and I fear it too …'

Michael paused. Despite Luisa's words, could he really read this? Wasn't it too private?

But she had said she wanted him to know.

Today was a good day because Leonora did not come. So this is the day I shall begin a diary, partly because it is 1950, the start of a new decade, but mostly because I feel so much stronger and happier when Leonora is not here.

I shall record everything important that happens, and it will be a place where Leonora cannot come – it will be my world, safe, private, and I will be able to shut her out completely … Please, God, let me be able to do that.

I don't know yet what important things I will be writing. I know about diaries, though. My father has printed copies of diaries written by famous people – Samuel Pepys and John Aubrey – men who lived hundreds of years ago, but whose diaries are still read today. So perhaps someone in the future will read this and wonder about me, and think how interesting it is to know about life in the 1940s and 1950s. My diaries might even be displayed in museums, so that scholarly people like father will consult them. Or I might have children some day, and they will read them, although I can't imagine where a husband to provide the children will come from, because I hardly ever go anywhere, except to church on Sundays, and we seldom have visitors in case it disturbs Father's Great Work. Also, Mother says visitors mean a lot of work and she has quite enough to do as it is; a house of this size does not run itself, we should all remember that – I could do more to help, and it would not hurt father to tidy his desk occasionally, either.

Because of Father's Work I must never be noisy or go rampaging about the house. I never do. I don't think I would know how to rampage, even if there were other children to rampage with, which there never have been.

Michael turned the page. Apart from that mention of 1950, Luisa had not dated any of the entries, but she appeared to have started a fresh page for each new one, and it did not look as if she had written in it every day. There were large gaps on some of the pages, and the ink varied in colour and in quality. The writing varied as well, and so strongly that it almost looked as if another person had made some of the entries. This was such a worrying thought, however, that Michael refused to give it attention.

Leonora was here today. I know she is trying to get into these pages, but I shall not let her, I shall
not …
I am stronger than she is, and as long as I remember that Leonora is a separate person, she cannot hurt me. It's important to keep hold of that thought. I have started saying it to myself each night, after I've said my prayers. I say,
I am not Leonora, I am not
, over and over again. I think it is what father calls a Coué exercise of the mind. He tried to teach me about Émile Coué who believed in the power of the mind, but Mother said the concept was beyond someone of my age and Father was wasting his time – no fourteen-year-old could be expected to recite mind-exercises.

I would recite the Devil's scriptures every night if I thought it would keep Leonora away. No, I don't mean that, of course I don't.

Leonora is trying her tricks to get into this diary, but I have learned how to cheat her. I know the times of the day when she tries to force her way into my head and lay her thoughts and memories over mine, smothering them so I can't get at them. Early evening is the time she likes best – twilight – or sometimes the hour just before dawn.

To make sure she does not get into these pages I am closing them very firmly after each entry and placing a paperweight on the cover.

This morning my governess asked if I had twisted my ankle, because she had noticed I seemed slightly lame. I do not remember twisting it, but we have strapped it up with a crêpe bandage. It is a nuisance, but I expect it will heal very soon.

Today, Mother and Father are making preparations for their visit to France and Belgium. It is all part of Father's Great Work, and something they do two or three times a year. I hope that when I'm older I might be allowed to accompany them on their journeys. The prospect is a bit alarming though, because I have hardly been beyond this corner of Norfolk. I don't count the three years when Fosse House was requisitioned for a convalescent home for soldiers wounded in World War II, and Mother and Father decamped to a house in Scotland to live with Mother's cousins. I was only four at the time; we were there for four years and the memories are all bad ones. The younger Scottish cousins bullied me and made apple pie beds and tied my plaits to the bedposts while I was asleep, and there were uncles with loud bluff voices and aunts who sniffed disapprovingly at Mother. I hated them all and I hated living there, so I don't think about it, not ever. I don't even look at the photographs and sketches of Fosse House in those years – the soldiers and the nurses who lived here then – because I can't bear knowing the house had a life of its own while I was away. I think my father hated being away from the house as much as I did; he had locked up his beloved library and left reams of instructions about what could be touched in the house and what could not, and how windows on the ground floor must never be opened after dusk on account of the poisonous night air from the marshes. He took as much of his work as he could to the Scottish house, but it was not the same. He did not like doing the things Mother's family liked doing, which was shooting game and tramping about the hills, and making disparaging remarks about people who read books and foraged into the past.

Mother hated being in Scotland because she did not like her family and because she believed the soldiers would damage Fosse House while we were away. She said it made no difference that they were recovering from battle wounds, you could not trust soldiers, everyone knew that, and it was no use people saying they were mostly officers because officers were often the worst.

While my parents are away my governess lives at Fosse House, and we have lessons, which mostly I like. We study great English writers and poets – later we might read some of the French writers; my governess says my French is coming along very well, and we could try Victor Hugo or possibly the poetry of Louise Colet, although Mme Colet's private life is to be much deplored. I thought, but did not say, that at least the lady had a private life, which is more than I have.

Sometimes we listen to music. We have a gramophone in the drawing room, and I am allowed to buy records with my small allowance and Christmas or birthday money. Father sometimes listens to the records with me – those are the rare occasions when we do something together. Mother often tells us she likes music, but usually she listens to two movements of a symphony, then says she cannot sit here all afternoon doing nothing.

It was Father who told me about Leonora. She was his aunt or great-aunt or third cousin – he is not sure of the exact relationship – and she had been part of a famous choir in Belgium.

‘Her name was Leonora,' he said, and with the pronouncing of the name, a curious thing happened to me. I thought: Leonora.
Leonora.
It was as if a connection had been made, as if a door had been opened, and something that had been waiting in Fosse House's darknesses for a very long time was peering out … Leonora, who had sung in a choir, and been afraid of something, so dreadfully afraid …

On Sundays we go to church and while my parents are away my governess and I take nature walks. This week, though, my foot is still troublesome so we don't walk very far.

It is quite difficult to write my diary while my governess is living in the house.

I have received a postcard from Mother and Father from Belgium. They are staying in a place called Liège. The name touches a chord deep within my mind, and reading the postcard and looking at the picture on the front, I have the feeling that Leonora is watching me.

The postcard shows an old stone building with a small bell tower surmounted by a cross, so it is either a church or perhaps a convent. I stared at it for a very long time, and I have it before me now, propped up on a corner of my dressing table where I am writing this. It's as if I recognize the place – no, it's Leonora who is doing that. How long will I have to fight her before she leaves me alone, I wonder …? Sometimes I hate my father for telling me about her.

The message on the postcard says Mother and Father are having a pleasant time and the weather is good. They hope I am well and ensuring the house is locked up at night.

I have found Liège in my atlas and in the encyclopedia, and it's one of those old towns soaked in the romantic history of so many European places: the small states and dukedoms with princes and margraves and little turreted castles. Reading about it, tracing its boundaries, I keep thinking: yes, I know that – and that. But how do I know?
How?

If I ask Mother how a particular journey has been, she might say the food had not agreed with her, oily foreign rubbish and she is glad to be home, or remark how tiring it had been walking round museums and libraries and she believes she will not accompany my father next time he goes away. She always says this, but she always does accompany him. I think she does not trust him to find his way home by himself.