Ghost Song (13 page)

She went to the Tarleton the following day, arming herself with a good torch and making sure to take the office mobile phone with her. Mobile phones were becoming more common but they were still quite expensive. Even so, Shona's boss had invested in one for general use; people going into deserted buildings as his staff often had to do, should be able to summon help in the event of the unexpected, he said. Walking along Southwark Street, the file in her bag, the phone in her coat pocket, Shona was aware of a sudden surge of well-being. For the first time she felt she was really part of London and of the people who scurried importantly to and fro.

She turned off Southwark Street and into Burbage Street, and from there went along the narrow passage called Platt's Alley at the side of the theatre. The old lantern with the legend ‘Stage Door' engraved on it was still over the door; Shona glanced up at it and tried to imagine how it must have looked nearly a hundred years ago with the gas light flaring.

The lock was not exactly stiff, but it resisted the key before the door finally opened. Shona had been braced for the smell of dirt and age, but there was a sense of newly cleaned walls and floors. There was a fairly wide passage beyond the door, with a small hatch and a counter on the right, a bit like a cloakroom hatch in an old-fashioned hotel. Over the hatch was faded lettering—‘Stage Doorkeeper'. Shona looked inside and saw the battered desk and chair, and the large pigeon-hole rack on the wall for letters.

Once inside the main part of the theatre she went through the ground level methodically, checking the list of contents, noting that a light fitting had fallen down in the supper room, seeing that there were only eight chairs in the green room when the inventory stated ten. Could one of the cleaners have filched a couple? If they were anything like the chairs still here they had probably not been worth anyone's while to take, but she would check tactfully, although she would be firm. Her grandfather had always said you should be firm with servants, ‘Or they will ride roughshod over you.' Her grandfather would probably have been lynched in today's classless society.

Everywhere was spick and span and pleasantly scented with polish and soap. Shona could report this and her boss would be pleased with the cleaning company and with Shona herself for being so efficient and thorough. She might create an opportunity to talk a bit more to him about how she was studying theatre history in her spare time: it might develop a spark between them. She would quite like to stay with the Harlequin Society, but she did not intend to answer phones and file reports for much longer and she would do whatever it took to move up the ladder. Her grandfather would have drawn down his brows at that, and said she was selling herself like a cheap tart, but Shona was not going to be cheap, in fact she was going to be very expensive indeed.

For the time being, she focussed on her work, sitting down in a corner of the auditorium to check the inventory again. She thought she had not missed anything and closed the file and went back through the foyer and along to the stage door. If she left now she would be back at the office before they locked the street door. It was then that she saw the secondary passage, almost opposite the doorkeeper's room. Did it lead to the underground rooms? She hesitated, remembering her boss's offhand warning, wondering if he would be pleased if she reported making a quick check of the cellars or if he would be annoyed with her for ignoring his instructions. Perhaps she could just go to the end of the passage and see what the layout was.

It did not look as if electricity had been extended down here, and when Shona switched on the torch it was clear that the cleaners had not extended their attentions here either. The brick walls were draped with cobwebs and the ground felt gritty with dirt.

As she went cautiously forward, she could hear timbers creaking overhead which made her think of her grandfather saying Grith House creaked because it was old. But the creakings in here were not just an old building's joists and timbers; they were more rhythmic. Almost like footsteps. Shona's heart started to beat a bit faster. Could it possibly be footsteps she was hearing? She remained where she was, listening intently, hearing faint sighings. Probably the sighings were just little gusts of wind getting in through a badly fitting window somewhere. Grith House had sighed and creaked in the same way.

The creakings came again, louder this time, and with a definite pattern to them. Footsteps? No, it was her imagination. But it really did sound as if someone was walking round inside the theatre. Supposing someone had got in and was hiding somewhere in the darkness, watching her? Shona was becoming quite frightened by this time, but tried to remember if she had locked the stage door when she came in. Yes, she had. Then there could not be anyone in here. She turned to retrace her steps, intending to get out of this place as quickly as possible and into the safe, crowded London streets.

The door from the foyer opened and the footsteps came along the corridor towards her.

There was no longer any question of getting out. The footsteps were already coming along the corridor and whoever the owner of those footsteps was, Shona would run smack into him. Even if she could beat him to the stage door, the old lock would take a minute or two to unfasten. She supposed it was just about possible this was someone with a reasonable right to be here, but as far as she knew the Harlequin Society had the only set of keys and she was not prepared to take any chances.

She switched off the torch, and moved back into the musty shadows of the brick tunnel. It was not pitch dark, there was just enough spill of light from the corridor to see the way, but it was dark enough to be cautious. With luck he would not know she was here and once he had gone she could get out. She pressed back against the cobwebby wall, her head turned. Would he go past? But unless he had his own keys, she was locked in with him. And then she heard something else—something that caused one of her old nightmares to stir uneasily.

Whoever was out there was singing quietly to himself as he walked through the darkness.

At the sound of that soft singing, Shona felt absolute terror scald through her, and for a frightening, shutter-flash of a second the nightmare was with her—it was all round her, and it was the dark night, the
bad
nightmare, the one in which she crouched in the darkness, listening for footsteps and for the soft singing that would mean her grandfather was coming and might find her…

She pushed the nightmare away and stayed where she was, not daring to move. The singing stopped and the footsteps paused, as if their owner was looking round. Had he realized she was here? If he looked into this passageway would he be able to see her? She risked turning her head to look deeper into the shadows and now that her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, she saw the little recess in the bricks on her left, about five feet high. Was it deep enough to hide in? Making as little noise as possible, she moved along to it. It was not a recess after all, but a door set deep into the brick-work: a door with a scarred oak surface and an iron handle.

A thick oak door, worn and scarred with age. A door that had been hidden behind an old rood screen and was never opened. But it was all right, because this was not Grith, this was the Tarleton.

This door was not locked. It made a rusty protest which Shona thought was not loud enough to be heard beyond the passage, and when she turned the handle it swung inwards with only the faintest scrape. She glanced back towards the main passageway, listening, but nothing happened and she could no longer hear that soft, eerie singing. She looked back at the partly open door.

It would be better not to go through the door leading down to the cellars,
her boss had said.
It'll be dark and possibly dangerous
. And,
Don't go through the cellar door, Shona,
her mother and grandfather used to say.
It's dark and dangerous down there…

Shona's surroundings blurred and the scents of dust and age were no longer those of an old music hall in London's Bankside: they were unmistakably and terrifyingly the scents of Grith House. But this was London, not Moil, and she was in the Tarleton and the ghosts had been left behind at Grith House.

Are you sure about that, Shona? You might have left me, but perhaps I never really left you—perhaps I came with you all the way to London and your splendid new life. Perhaps I'm here with you now
.

You're not here, said Shona to the sly voice. You're at Grith.

Beyond the door was a flight of steps—old stone steps, worn away at the centre, winding down into a thick blackness. A faint stale breath of air gusted out to meet her like bad drains, like something walled up in an old cellar, like the Thames slopping over its sluice gates, or Moil Moor overflowing after heavy rain.

Shona could no longer hear the soft singing or the footsteps, but she could hear the whispering inside her head.

Are you going down there, Shona?

She could ignore the whispering voice; the vital thing was to stay out of the way until the intruder had gone. There was no real need to worry, and she had the mobile phone if she had to call someone for help. But it would be better if the intruder did not know she was here. She would go down the steps, just a little way.

It was very dark but Shona could see her way and there was a narrow handrail. Halfway down she remembered the torch and switched it on; its light would not be seen from here. Her grandfather would not know she was here; he would not catch her down here— No, Grandfather was not here, he was at Moil and had been dead for years. Keep hold of the present, Shona. Yes, but someone had walked through this place with Grandfather's tread, humming softly in the way Grandfather always did… Shona glanced back up the steps uneasily, but nothing stirred.

The steps ended in a large, low-ceilinged room—probably it had once been used as a general storage area, but there was nothing much in it now except some pieces of scenery stacked at one end, and a couple of old skips, their lids open to show old stage costumes and folded lengths of cloth, all thick with dust and grey with age. She moved the torch beam round the cellar. There was nothing much down here, except dust and dirt, and—

And a flat brick wall. A wall that was grimed with dirt and cobwebs, but that looked different from the rest of the cellar. Newer? Because someone had built it secretly and privately, in the middle of the night. Someone who had had to work by lantern light and candlelight.

Something seemed to move deep within Shona's mind, like a deep fissure in a cliff widening, and this time the flare of memory was stronger, it was like a scalding tide of acid. She sank to her knees on the lowest step, and crouched there, hugging her knees in her arms, the sinister footsteps that had driven her to hide forgotten. She had no idea how long she sat like that, but she thought it was a long time before she finally managed to thrust the memories down and shakily stand up again.

There was no sound of movement from above. She looked back at the brick wall, then, moving warily, went back up the steps and closed the cellar door. The sly voice came again then, asking if she really thought she could shut the ghosts away so easily, but she managed to ignore it.

She stood at the entrance to the passage, listening, but the theatre seemed to be silent and unthreatening and she went out into Platt's Alley, and back through the safe anonymous London streets to the office.

Her boss was pleased with the careful, detailed inventory she presented. He wanted to know if she had been all right inside the Tarleton on her own. She said yes, of course, she had been all right, and what an interesting old place, and how sad it had been dark and sealed for so many years.

‘Those years will pass,' her boss said.

And the years had passed and for most of the time Shona was able to forget the memories and the ghosts. But every time she thought about the Tarleton, there was a deep twisting inside her mind, like cramp from eating too many unripe apples or the sickening pain when you catch a fingernail and tear it back from its bed.

She did not think anyone realized this.

C
ALEY MERRICK HOPED
Shona Seymour had never realized how much he had wanted to create some kind of connection to the Harlequin Society.

He had heard, in a general way, that the society occasionally made use of local people to help with small exhibitions and mailings and the like, and he had requested an interview to see if he might be considered for this. When he explained about living in Candle Street, barely five minutes away, Miss Seymour had seemed pleased; she said they liked to use local people whenever they could, although Mr Merrick must understand it would only be an odd few days here and there. Envelope folding in the main, or help with their exhibitions. What the Americans called grunt work, said Miss Seymour, but useful and necessary, and they paid an hourly rate. But it really was casual, infrequent work. Caley had not said he did not care how casual or how infrequent the work was.

He had not, in fact, liked Shona Seymour much. He had found her shrewd and sharp—exactly the kind of woman who made him nervous and unsure of himself. Once or twice during the interview he thought she looked at him very searchingly, but he reminded himself that she could not possibly know who he was, or how he had waited and watched for the right moment to make his approach.