Voices in a Haunted Room (21 page)

Millicent slipped her arm through his. She was a little forward, I supposed, for the manners of our day, but her mother showed no sign of disapproving, which told me that the redoubtable Lady Pettigrew smiled on Jonathan as a future son-in-law.

I was restless and uncertain. I wanted to see Jonathan alone. I wanted to tell him that there must be no more love-making between us. I wanted to ask him what his feelings were for Millicent Pettigrew, and if that state of bantering flirtation which seemed to exist between them had any meaning behind it.

I had said I would not be at the rendezvous that afternoon but I was making excuses to myself. I wanted to
talk
to him, I kept assuring myself. I wanted to stress that our dangerous relationship must cease.

Or did I merely want to be with him? Did I know in my heart that once we were alone in that room, once he held me close to him, I would give way as I had before?

I watched them go off riding. I said I had certain things to do and could not join them. Jonathan waved to me as he rode off. His plan was to lose them as quickly as he could, return to the stables and leave his horse there, for it would be dangerous to tether it outside the house where it could be seen. It would not take him long to hurry across the fields.

In spite of having promised myself not to go, I set out.

I must talk to him, I must, I kept saying to myself.

That was my excuse.

I was a few minutes early. I hesitated at the door. My inclination was to wait outside, but that was foolish. What if someone passed by and saw me waiting there? Still, I hesitated. Was I afraid of an old house? To show myself that I was not, I took the key from my pocket, opened the door and went in, shutting it behind me. When he came, Jonathan would ring the bell. It was a little rusty, but it worked.

I advanced into the hall. Certainly it had changed and the minstrels’ gallery without its curtains looked quite ordinary. I could not imagine any ghosts hiding there now. It was all a matter of shadows and darkness. How right David had been about those overgrown shrubs. They had not been dealt with yet and Sophie had indicated that they would only be trimmed, so she would still retain some of the old house’s atmosphere.

I ran up the stairs to that room which I looked upon as ours.

I stood in it and thought of the first time. It had happened so swiftly that it had caught me unaware, and then once it had happened I was trapped; and it had been so easy, having made the first step, to go on.

How silent the house was!

Hurry, Jonathan, I thought.

Then I heard that voice… that whisper, preceded by a little laugh, and then: “Mrs. Frenshaw… remember the seventh commandment, Mrs. Frenshaw.”

I stood there stunned. For some seconds I could not move. I was straining my ears listening. There was no sound… nothing but that frightening silence.

I ran out of the room and as I reached the stairs the door bell was clanging through the house. I ran down and opened the door.

Jonathan was there. He caught me in his arms. “What’s wrong? What is it, Claudine?”

“I heard it again,” I said. “The voice…”

“Voice? Where?”

“In the room. Our room.”

“There’s no one here…”

“I heard it. I heard it distinctly.”

“Come on. We’ll have a look,” he said.

He put his arm round me and I clung to him. We ran up the stairs.

There was no one there.

He looked at me puzzled. “What was it like?”

“It was the way it was before… Echoing… Strangely muted.”

“You mean as if someone were trying to disguise the voice?”

“I don’t know. It laughed after it had said it. ‘Remember the seventh commandment.’”

“What nonsense!”

“But it’s apt, isn’t it? The voice… it knows.”

“My dear Claudine, I simply do not believe in disembodied voices.”

“I tell you I heard it… distinctly. Just as I heard it before.”

“Then there is someone here.”

“But how could it be… in that room?”

“Is that the only place where you have heard this voice?”

I nodded.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to look.”

We went into all the rooms, up to the next floor and the attics. Then we went down through the hall to the kitchens. It was as I guessed it would be—empty.

We were the only ones in the house.

“Where are you?” shouted Jonathan. “You of the idiot voice. Come out and show yourself.”

His voice gave back a faint echo. Then the house was quiet. Not a sound. I looked up at the vaulted ceiling, at the stone walls, at the gallery.

“There’s nobody here,” said Jonathan.

“It’s haunted,” I insisted. “It’s something horrible… something from the past.”

“You don’t believe that really. There must be some explanation, a logical one.”

“What?”

“Someone is here… was here… someone playing a trick.”

“Someone who knows—about us.”

He admitted solemnly: “Yes, someone who knows about us. Or,” he added, “you imagined you heard the voice.”

“I heard it distinctly.”

“You don’t take this lightly, do you?”

“Take it lightly! No, I do not. But you do, Jonathan. That’s what I am beginning to understand.”

“Claudine, you are the most important thing in the world to me.”

I shook my head.

“You are a very conventional lady,” he said. “Brought up in that formal society, eh? It has always amused me, the rigorous formality of the French and the exploits they indulge in… in secret, of course. However, they brought you up that way, and now your conscience worries you. I am beginning to think that it was
that
which you heard.”

“In other words, you believe I imagined I heard voices.”

“Perhaps you did, Claudine.”

“I did not.”

“Then who? We’ve been round the house. No one is here but us. Who could have got in? You let yourself in with the key and shut the door. Is there any other key?”

I said suddenly: “The window. Of course. David and I looked round once. I told you about it. And we came through a window.”

“Where?”

“It was somewhere in the hall.” I crossed the stone floor with speed.

I said: “This is it. Look! The latch is broken. Anyone who knew could get in through it. It’s simple.”

He stood looking at me in dismay.

“So you think someone was in the house when you came in. But how could that person talk to you in that room? You would have heard whoever it was running down the stairs and out through the window wouldn’t you?”

“I should think so.”

“Claudine, you imagined it. That’s the only answer. You imagined it.”

“No. I know the difference between imagination and reality.”

“Sometimes we all have fancies.”

“I heard that voice,” I said firmly. “Do you realize what it means? Someone knows… about us.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re working yourself up, Claudine. Forget it. We’re here, aren’t we? I had the devil of a job to elude them.”

“Millicent clung, I daresay.”

“With a certain tenacity, I admit. But I was determined to be with you, so I escaped.”

“Jonathan, I want to go.”

“Go! Why, we’ve only just come.”

“I came to tell you that it has to stop.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at me with that expression of mock exasperation.

“I can’t go on deceiving David. I’ve got to stop it. I’m going to try to forget that it ever happened. You must too.”

“Never,” he said. “Forget the most wonderful experience of my life! You are asking too much. Come, my dearest. There is not much time, you know.”

“No,” I insisted. “I can’t. I must go.”

He drew me to him, but this time I felt stronger. I kept seeing David’s face and remembering how much I loved him.

I said: “I’m going back to Eversleigh. I should never have come. Jonathan, I couldn’t bear it if ever David discovered. I want everything to stay as it was between us.”

“It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think. I only know that more than anything at the moment I want to get away from this house.”

“That silly old voice has unnerved you.”

“It has frightened me, Jonathan, and it has made me fully realize what I have done… to myself, to David and to you. I have betrayed my husband. You have betrayed your brother.”

“Darling Claudine, let’s drop the histrionics, shall we? I love you. I want you. I want you more than anything. Isn’t that good enough?”

“How can it be when I am your brother’s wife?”

“There you go again! I want you. You want me. We’ve had some wonderful times together. You’re a passionate woman, remember. You’ve wakened up. But you have this conscience that is bothering you. Everything is all right as long as we are careful.”

I could detect the faint irritation in his attitude. He had come to indulge his sexual desires and I was baulking him. I saw him then more clearly than I ever had and a terrible desolation swept over me. I had destroyed my marriage for a brief sensational excitement.

I had mistaken the shadow for the substance.

Desperately I wanted to go back; but how can one ever do that?

I turned and ran out of the house.

He came after me calling my name.

We stood outside together and I locked the door with trembling hands. I felt that I had locked out that part of my life.

Then I ran back to Eversleigh and all the time I was thinking: That voice… Whose voice? The voice of someone who knows my guilty secret.

A
NEW YEAR HAD
begun. I had not been alone with Jonathan since that visit to Enderby. I avoided him and I felt my determination growing stronger. My mother noticed that there was something wrong with me. She insisted that I retire early and I was only too glad to do so. I wanted to be alone to think of what I had done and whether I should ever escape from it.

Then the most appalling suspicion came to me that I might be going to have a child and this presented such a disastrous possibility that I refused at first to consider the idea. That was foolish, of course. If it were so, I must face it. I wanted a child. I always had. But if it should be happening now, how should I know who the father was?

I had thought that I could finish my relationship with Jonathan and grow away from it. But if what I feared was true, how could I ever do that? All through my life there would be a constant reminder of my guilt.

I had nightmares. I dreamed I was in that room and the voice was going on and on reminding me that I was a sinful woman, that I had offended against the laws of God and nature. I had acted with callous wantonness towards a husband who was the kindest man in the world.

I think my love for David had grown greater in those days which followed Christmas and it made me even more aware of the enormity of what I had done. I would have given anything to wipe out the last months, to go back to being the innocent young woman I once was, a woman of honour and integrity, a woman who appreciated that she was married to a good man.

How easy it is to repent when one sees the folly of one’s ways! How easy to make excuses—youth, inexperience, excessive emotion, undreamed-of sensuality… all these might apply, but there was no excuse.

The guests had departed and Christmas was over.

Aunt Sophie was planning to move into Enderby in February and my mother was trying to dissuade her. But Sophie was eager to go.

“A big house like that needs warming up,” my mother reminded her.

“We can manage. Jeanne and I will engage the servants, settle them in for a week and then we shall be ready.”

I thought that in a way my mother would be relieved when she had gone. She told me that Sophie always made her feel guilty, and I, who knew great guilt, understood how it gnawed at one’s peace of mind—although my mother had nothing to feel guilty about.

“I suppose,” she said, “that people who are maimed like that sometimes have a way of making you feel in the wrong, particularly when… Oh but you know she was betrothed to your father before I married him.”

“Yes, and she refused to marry him.”

“It’s true, and it was some time after when I married him.”

“It’s all so long ago. Do people ever forget?”

“They remember as long as they want to. They keep the memory alive. They get a certain satisfaction in keeping old wounds from healing.”

I shivered.

“Claudine, you are not feeling quite yourself, are you?”

I started. “I’m perfectly all right,” I said.

“I thought about getting Dr. Meadows to call in and have a look at you.”

“Oh no, Maman, no.” I spoke in panic.

She put her arm round me. “All right. Wait and see how you go.”

Jonathan went to London at the beginning of the new year.

“There’s a great deal of secret activity going on,” said David to me in the quietness of our bedroom. “It’s not only the war but the situation generally. What is happening in France has sent its reverberations all over Europe. There can’t be one monarch who feels very comfortable when considering what has happened to the King and Queen of France. They must wonder if that sort of thing could spread to other countries.”

“Do you think it could happen here?”

“It’s what people fear, but I have a feeling we shall escape. We are not of the same temperament as the French and not nearly so likely to go in for that sort of revolution.”

“We have had our riots. We even had a civil war last century.”

“Yes, and perhaps it is too close in living memory for people to want anything like that again.”

“And we did behead our King as they have Louis and Marie Antoinette.”

“And restored a new monarch little more than ten years later. Moreover we have not the same reason here. Do you think the merchants of London want riots in the streets? They are too comfortably off. But agitators can do plenty of harm and there are criminals and vagrants who have nothing to lose. They could cause trouble.”

“Do we still have these agitators here then?”

“I am sure of it. Jonathan and my father know a great deal, though they say little. Jonathan is taking over from my father, I think. They don’t talk to me about it—which is quite right. Only those who are involved know what is going on.”