The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery (20 page)

‘The letter is addressed to Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer,' he said. ‘He was the commanding officer of the prisoner of war camp at Holzminden – I've been able to confirm that. I don't know how Edreich got the letter out – or even if Niemeyer ever actually received it. Letters sent to England from the soldiers in France were censored, so that no information could be given away about placements or plans. But I don't think outward letters were quite as strictly censored. It wasn't like the last war, you know. In the Great War, people knew, in a general way, about spies, but there was no thought of the enemy actually coming into the country. There wasn't the same kind of suspicion. I don't know, either, how it ended up in Liège, except that they've gathered a great deal of memorabilia from that war. I'll read what Hugbert Edreich wrote.'

(Later, I found the letter in Father's desk, and I copied it into this diary. I don't know if it will ever be of any use, but it's another small part of Stephen.)

The strangeness in my father's eyes seemed stronger, and I glanced uneasily towards the door, wondering if I should call Mother. But he was already reading aloud, and here, on the next page, is what the letter says.

To Hauptmann Niemeyer

Sir,

I write to you at the request of Hauptfeldwebel Barth, to respectfully inform you that our task progresses well. I send this report from a small village very near to the place to which we must travel (which I do not name in case this letter is read by others). We are staying at a small tavern (the Hauptfeldwebel wishes me to assure you that we are mindful of the funds given to us and are not being excessive in our spending).

We have been able to talk to local people, although we are careful to preserve our disguises. We are certain that Stephen Gilmore has made his way back to his family house, and is there now.

I have suggested that the correct procedure would be to bring Gilmore back to Germany, but Hauptfeldwebel Barth fears he might cheat us again, as he and the Russian journalist, Alexei Iskander, did at Holzminden. Therefore, he intends that the sentence of execution will be carried out here. I am unsure whether this is possible – such a sentence carried out in a country other than the one where it was originally passed could be seen as transgressing the law.

However, be assured that I shall obey whatever commands I am given.

I send my respectful duty to you,

Hugbert Edreich

There was a long silence. Then I said, ‘They came here, didn't they? They came to kill Stephen.'

‘Yes, I believe they did. The death sentence had been passed in Holzminden – I don't know why or what Stephen's crime had been, but I don't think four German soldiers would have risked coming to the country at that time just to recapture an escaped prisoner of war. They came to this house to get him. I think they got into the grounds. I think Stephen saw them or heard them, and he tried to get back into the house to escape being captured and being—'

‘Executed?'

‘Yes. I think he was in the walled garden when they came, Luisa.'

In the walled garden … Then Stephen was the shadow that occasionally darted across the gardens at twilight … He was inside the smudged twilight images when the trees seemed to take on the shapes of men … And the echoes trickling through my mind at dusk were his echoes as he fled from his pursuers.
‘Let me in …'

‘Did he get back into the house?' I said, and I could hear how my voice was strained and desperate. ‘Did he escape them?'

‘I don't know. What I do know is that there's no record anywhere of his death. He simply vanished. So, seven years after that war ended, I had him pronounced as officially dead by the courts. I hated doing that, you know, but it was necessary if I was to inherit this house. It had been empty all those years. It was falling into terrible disrepair.' He glanced towards the window. Someone had left the wrought-iron gate to the walled garden open, latched back against the wall. Mother would probably send me out to close it after supper. She would not go herself, because she disliked the walled garden, saying it was a gloomy old place.

Father said, ‘If they did execute him, they would have done so in secrecy. That German, Hugbert Edreich, wrote in his letter that he wonders if the sentence would have been legal in this country.'

‘It might have been seen as murder?' I said tentatively.

‘Yes. I think that's what he meant. He sounds a decent sort of man, doesn't he?'

‘Would they have shot Stephen?'

‘I don't know. Shooting was one of the more usual forms of execution, though. But we could save him, Luisa.' He came closer to me. ‘Think about it. Stephen tried to run back to this house – he called out as he ran – he called out to be let in. We've both heard him.'

‘There was someone in the house, then? Someone who could have let him in?'

‘I don't know that, either. But it's Stephen we hear, Luisa. He's constantly trying to get inside the house—' He broke off, breathing a little too fast, the dreadful mad look glaring from his eyes. I pretended it was only the light from the nearby lamp making him look like that, but I knew it wasn't. ‘We could save him,' he said again.

‘But he isn't real. How can you save someone from something that happened such a long time ago? Because—' I struggled with a complicated concept, then said, ‘Whatever happened all those years ago has happened. You can't change it.'

‘Are you sure about that?' he said softly. ‘Perhaps you're too young to understand. I forget how young you are. You wouldn't grasp how Time operates. How it can travel forwards as well as backwards. It bleeds, you see, Luisa. If it's damaged, Time bleeds. And sometimes it bleeds forward.'

I don't know if I've written that down correctly, because I don't know if I've remembered it correctly – I certainly don't know if I've understood it.

‘How could we save him?' I asked.

My father said, ‘Tonight, when he whispers at the window, we're going to let him in.'

That was the point at which I knew he was mad.

Now I'm sitting in the library, with the curtains open to the night garden. I'm listening for the footsteps I have heard so often in this house and for the whispering that can lie on the air like torn fragments of old silk.

I'm not sure where Father is, and I don't know what he intends to do. He was silent throughout supper, but that isn't unusual, and it drew no comment from Mother. My own silence did, though, and Mother subjected me to a series of questions about my health. Some were boring, some were ridiculous, and several were embarrassing. I said I was quite all right, thank you, only perhaps a little tired.

To this, Mother at once said she was tired as well, in fact she believed she had one of her headaches coming on, not that she expected anyone to understand or sympathize. She would take one of her sleeping tablets and hope she was granted a reasonable night's sleep for once.

I mumbled something and said I would read in the library before going up to bed. I had the newest Agatha Christie mystery. Father's eyes flickered, and the shared knowledge of what we were going to do passed between us.

The Christie book is in front of me as I write this, and I see I have reached the part where M'sieu Hercule Poirot is about to reveal the killer's name. I wish I could continue reading, and I wish I could be interested in nothing more than finding out who committed the three (was it three?) murders earlier in the story.

But all I can think of is that
he
will soon be here. Stephen. He's dead, of course. He can't come into this house. But what if he does? Will I see him? Will he see me? Is he the romantic war hero I thought him, a dashing spy, dying for his King and country? Or is he a villain, under sentence of death for some squalid crime, perpetually dodging those soldiers? And who is it that he calls to in this house? Could it be Leonora? Was she here, and is she part of Stephen's story in some way? That thought brings a horrid, illogical jab of jealousy.

‘I've left the iron gate open to make it easier,' Father said to me before we sat down to supper. He said it quietly, but he said it eagerly, like a child wanting to give pleasure, and I hated him for not understanding how much he was frightening me, and how incredibly stupid he was to believe in his mad idea.

A moment ago the little clock over the mantel chimed, breaking softly into the silence, and I jumped. And it's as if the chiming released a trigger, because something is starting to happen. A moment ago I heard the faint screech of the iron gate. The hinges always screech like that if someone pushes them right back against the stone wall. If I turn my head a little I can see into the night garden – I can see the outlines of the trees, grey and black in this light – and I can see the wrought-iron gate and the walled garden beyond it. Is Stephen there?

If I stand close to the window I can hear soft rustlings and murmurings. And now there's the soft light crunch of footsteps on the gravel path that circles most of the house. Stephen. He's coming nearer, and I can see him now. A young man, wearing a long, dark overcoat. It's called a greatcoat, I think. It's what soldiers wore in that war – the Great War – Stephen's war. I see him in the way you see a piece of film projected on to a screen. Not quite transparent, but nearly so.

‘Let me in … You must let me in …'

The words are faint and broken because the wind is snatching at them. I've wiped the mist from the glass so I can see better, and I've set the lamp on the desk so the light shines across the gardens.

He's coming towards the window … I cannot write any more …

It's almost midnight, and I'm in my bedroom. I know I won't be able to sleep until I've recorded something of what happened earlier.

As Stephen approached the house, I could hear him sobbing quietly. With the sounds came a feeling of what I can only describe as impending doom. Written down, that looks impossibly dramatic, but it's what I felt.

‘Let me in … For the love of God, let me in … Niemeyer's butchers are already in the grounds …'

There was a space of time – it might have been two minutes or two hours for all I know – when I didn't think I had the courage to do what Father wanted. But those pleading words, that harsh, desperate sobbing was too much for me. If I walked out of the room now, Stephen would come to this house every night like this, begging to be let in.

‘Niemeyer's butchers are in the grounds …'

I leaned forward and opened the window.

At first I thought nothing was going to happen. There was a faint spattering of rain on my hands, and then, with heart-snatching suddenness, it was as if the massing darknesses and the furtive whisperings whirled their tangled skeins up and spun them into a tattered sphere that swooped straight at me. It was like being smacked across the eyes, and as I gasped and stepped back, a cold wind blew into my face. The sobbing was nearer, and there was such fear and such despair in that sobbing, as if someone was drowning in the dark, all alone …

And then he was there, framed in the window, barely two feet away from me. He was young and pale, there was a tiny scar on one cheekbone, and he was looking into the warm, lamplit room with such longing that it tore into my heart.

I said, in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, ‘Come into the house. You'll be safe here.'

A hand came out, and even through my fear I saw the fingertips were raw and bleeding, the nails torn almost to the quick in places. The pity of it scalded through me, but I put out my own hand and he took it eagerly, his poor torn fingers closing around mine. They were cold, so dreadfully cold, and he clutched at my hand as if I was the only thing in existence that could save him … There are moments in life that stamp themselves for ever on some inner level of the mind – moments that will never really fade. For me, that moment has always been when Stephen Gilmore took my hand.

And then two things happened practically simultaneously. The door of the library opened, and my father stood there. The shadowy outline in the window and the feel of those torn, cold fingers holding mine both vanished.

He hadn't been real, of course, I knew that, but it was as if something had been wrenched out of my body. A sense of aching desolation and loss swept over me, and I turned furiously to my father. ‘Why did you come in?' I said, with an angry sob. ‘He was here.' I pointed, stupidly, fruitlessly, to the window. ‘You came in and he went away,' I said, and sat down abruptly in a chair, because I felt as if something had sucked all the bones out of my body.

‘No. Luisa, look there.' My father pointed to the floor, and I saw faint damp footprints leading across the sitting-room floor and out to the hall. In a voice from which all the breath seemed to have been taken, he said, ‘He didn't go away. He's here in the house.'

S
o they let him in, thought Michael, leaning his head back against the chair for a moment. They both believed they had let Stephen in, and Booth Gilmore believed he could save him from the German soldiers – Niemeyer's butchers.

In broad daylight, with people around and normality everywhere, he would probably have found this no more than rather sad – an indication of the introspection of a solitary young girl and a man with an obsession. Marooned in Fosse House with its whispering darknesses and darting shadows – with his own encounter with Stephen Gilmore still vividly in his mind – he found it chilling.

He turned to the next page of the journal. The entries seemed to be from around the same period, but they were mostly about ordinary, everyday things. Lessons with the governess, church, one or two mild local social events.

On one page, though, Luisa had written, ‘It is now more important than ever to fight Leonora. If she finally takes over my mind, I will have none of my own memories, only hers. There will be no memories left of Stephen – of the feel of his hand taking mine. I will not let her overpower me, I will
not
.'