Ghost Song (50 page)

There was no sound from Madeleine's part of the house which was good: for an elderly lady with a bad heart to be woken abruptly and told there was a potentially dangerous woman in the house might be fatal. It might have the very result Shona had been aiming for when she played that creepy music.

She could almost feel Shona's mind working behind the door, planning, calculating. She'll guess I'm intending to get to a phone and call out the cavalry, thought Hilary, and she'll try to talk her way out of it when they get here. Will she say she caught me in the attic, instead of the other way round? Whatever she says, there's still that person she talked about—Elspeth, she said. She bricked her up in a cellar. I can't believe any of this is happening.

The sitting-room landline would be quicker than finding her mobile and switching it on, and she was about to make a sprint for the ground floor when Shona renewed her assault on the door. The old timbers creaked ominously and it was obvious that Shona would only have to make a couple more attempts and the door would burst open. Hilary took a deep breath and ran down the twisty stairs. Above her, Shona had redoubled her efforts—at any minute she would escape from the attic—and at any moment Madeleine would surely be woken by the noise. Hilary had no idea what Shona would do, but it was clear she had to get the police here as fast as possible.

She reached the ground floor and dived into the sitting room, scanning the darkness for the phone. There it was near the French windows: one of the old black sit up and beg kind, with a receiver and old-fashioned dial. Hilary lifted the receiver, her hand going to the 9, and stopped, frowning. There was no dial tone, just a flat blankness. She jiggled the receiver rest, but nothing happened. Trying to beat down panic, but aware that Shona could erupt out of the attic at any minute, she dialled anyway. Her hands were wound so tightly around the receiver her knuckles hurt.

Ten precious seconds ticked away before she acknowledged that the phone was dead. Had it been unplugged? Could Shona have planned so far ahead? Hilary picked up the phone cable and felt along it, more than half expecting to find it had been pulled from its socket.

Somebody had cut the cable, very neatly and sharply, just where it came out from the socket. The socket itself was low down near the skirting board, and the cut cable would only be discovered if someone tried to make a phone call—and people who had guests for the evening did not normally make phone calls. Shona did it, thought Hilary. She either did it early in the evening when Madeleine and I were putting the supper together, or later, when we went up to bed and left her down here. She said there were things she couldn't remember—something about things being in the half of her mind she couldn't reach.

The horror of the situation broke upon her in an almost overwhelming flood, but she forced herself to think. Could she get back upstairs without running into Shona and barricade herself into her bedroom? No, of course she could not, she needed to get help—a phone in a neighbouring house or the village. What about the car—was there any chance that Shona had left the keys in the ignition? But memory showed her Shona locking the car when they arrived and dropping the keys in her handbag. And there was Madeleine to consider. Hilary could not leave Madeleine on her own in the house with Shona.

She heard the attic door smack hard against the wall overhead and footsteps coming down the narrow stair to the landing. She's got out, thought Hilary, every muscle tensed, expecting Shona to come straight downstairs. But she did not. There was the sound of sharp knocking upstairs—hands rapping peremptorily against wood.

‘Madeleine?' said Shona's voice, friendly and polite. ‘Madeleine, it's Shona. Can you open the door? Something dreadful's happening—it's Hilary. She's had some kind of brainstorm. We need to get help.' There was silence, and Hilary heard Shona knock again. In the same soft friendly voice, she said, ‘Please open the door, Madeleine. Please let me in.'

Hilary instantly forgot about her own safety and was halfway back up the stairs, shouting as loudly as she could.

‘Madeleine—it's a trick! Whatever you do don't open the door to her. Lock it or barricade yourself in! The phone wire's cut—I'm going for help!'

She had no idea if Madeleine could hear, but as Shona knocked again, she heard, faintly but clearly, Madeleine calling back. ‘I don't know what's going on but I'm staying here until I know it's safe to come out.'

This was a relief, because it sounded as if there was a lock on Madeleine's door. But Shona was coming along the landing and at any minute she would be on the stairs. The main front door had a bewildering array of locks and bolts which would take several minutes to open—minutes Hilary did not have. The stairs creaked and a shadow appeared on the wall. She's coming! thought Hilary in panic, and grabbing one of the raincoats from the old-fashioned coat-stand, ran through the house, slamming all the doors behind her, because if Shona had to open doors it would give her a few extra seconds to get outside. She pulled the raincoat round her as she went, making for the kitchen because all houses of this age and size had at least two doors, and surely she had seen a garden door?

There it was, the traditional half-glass, half-wood door. There was a lock, the key was in the lock, and there was a bolt at the top. Hilary's hands were shaking so badly she could hardly turn the key, but she managed it and reached up to slide the bolt back. The door swung open and cold, rainy night air met her.

Uncaring of the fact she was only wearing a raincoat over pyjamas and thin-soled moccasins, Hilary went out into the night. The prospect of playing hide and seek with a self-confessed murderess in the dark garden was a nightmarish one, but if she kept to the shadows she should get down the drive and onto the road. From there she would have to run until she came to a house, then hammer on the door and hope they would phone the police. She took a deep breath and sprinted across the lawn in the direction of the drive. Rain lashed her face and the thick bushes fringing the drive were squat black shapes like crouching monsters ready to pounce on her. Twice she flinched, throwing up her hands defensively, because it seemed as if one of the shadows was lurching towards her, but she reached the gate without mishap and went out onto the narrow country road. On a bright night she would probably have been able to see the outlines of nearby properties clearly, but with rain and clouds blotting out the moon, she could only see hedges and fields. Left or right? Devil or deep blue sea? They had driven through Fosse Leigh village, and about a mile beyond it, then they had turned right into Levels House. Had there been houses on the stretch of road between the village and this house? Hilary thought there had been two or three. In any event, she would feel safer heading towards a place where there were buildings—where there would surely be a pub with people living on the premises. Even so, as she turned left, she had the feeling that she was flipping a mental coin.

She had got no more than fifteen yards when something happened that sent a chill through her whole body. The soft sound of footsteps coming towards her—coming from the direction of Levels House. Someone was creeping along the dark road after her.

R
OBERT WOKE AT
quarter
past ten, and realized he had either forgotten to set the alarm, or had slept through it.

This was terrible because almost certainly the police would have been in touch with the Harlequin office, which meant Hilary would already know the full extent of the melodrama and was probably wondering why he had not called her. The thought of Hilary thinking he had not bothered to tell her about the body behind the underground wall was so dreadful that Robert pulled on a dressing gown, tipped some orange juice into a glass from the fridge, which he swallowed at one go, and headed for the phone at once. Even if the police were already crawling over the Harlequin and the Tarleton, surely Hilary would understand when he explained everything, including how it had been well after three a.m. when he finally got home.

It was infuriating to find that her direct number was on voicemail. Robert tried the mobile number, but that too went straight to voicemail and he hung up without leaving a message. Describing the discovery of a partly desiccated body could not really be done in a two-minute recorded message; also, he had no way of knowing where Hilary might be, or who she might be with, when she listened to it. He would try again later.

After he had showered, dressed and drunk some coffee, he telephoned his office to give an edited version of what had happened and explain that because of it he did not think he would be able to get in today. His partner was at first inclined to be sceptical, but Robert was not given to spinning wild stories about finding mummified human remains, in fact he was not given to spinning stories of any kind, so the partner fetched Robert's diary and they spent the next half hour sorting out the two appointments Robert had for that day, and discussing the report for the yuppie apartments near Waterloo Station. Robert's notes about that were in a file on his desk, which meant the client could at least be given the gist of his findings.

‘Very precise and methodical,' said the partner, reading them. ‘All the way from the wood rot in the floor joists down to stress fatigue in the metal underpinning.'

‘Only battleships and surveyors get stress fatigue,' said Robert, and rang off.

DS Treadwell phoned almost immediately after this to say he was in the Harlequin offices and trying to trace the Tarleton's owner.

‘Shona Seymour's out at meetings with some radio programmers apparently,' he said. ‘She left a note on the receptionist's desk late last night to say she'll be tied up all day and not to expect her back in the office until late tomorrow. Her mobile's switched off, but I've left a message asking her to call me. No one's sure which radio studios she was going to, and her assistant's taken a couple of days' leave—sorry, did you say something?'

‘No.'

‘Anyway, the assistant's mobile is on voicemail as well. I didn't leave a message—if she's on holiday she might be anywhere—she might be out of the country. It's annoying they're both away at the same time, but these things happen. I'll see you later, Mr Fallon. You're coming into the station at two aren't you?'

‘Yes,' said Robert, and rang off, wondering why Hilary had not mentioned that she would be on holiday today. Perhaps there had been a crisis of some kind: some family thing. He reminded himself that he did not really know much about her. After a moment he tried her flat, but this phone, too, was on answerphone. Robert did leave a message this time, not mentioning the body or the Tarleton, just saying he had been trying to reach her, and asking her to call back.

At one o'clock he ate a couple of sandwiches, and set off for Canon Row to make his statement. This turned out to be a bureaucratic labyrinth, made worse by a tedious wait for people who, as far as Robert could tell, had left the building, could not be found, or could not be bothered. He had expected the statement-making to take about forty-five minutes; in the event, it took nearer two hours. DS Treadwell looked in to say they had not yet heard from Shona Seymour.

‘We've left another message on her voicemail, but she still hasn't replied,' he said. ‘A bit odd for someone who's supposed to be such a sharp businesswoman, but she might be out of range of a signal or in some long-winded meeting and not wanting interruptions. We'll have to open the cellar up reasonably soon and get forensics in and the body out, of course, but that body's not going anywhere on its own, so we'll wait another few hours. I'd rather have the owner's authority before we start tearing walls down—or at worst let him know what's going on.'

‘Isn't there anyone in overall command of the Harlequin set-up?' asked Robert.

‘There's some kind of governing trust, but it doesn't sound as if any of its members have much to do with the actual running of things so we're not bothering with them unless we have to,' said Treadwell. ‘What we're doing today is taking a brief look in the Harlequin's files for the owner's name and address. The receptionist has found some keys to Seymour's office, and everyone's being very cooperative. There's a part-time worker who's helping out as well.'

‘I wish you luck tracking down the owner's identity,' said Robert. ‘As far as I can make out, it's been shrouded in mystery for the best part of a century.'

‘We'll keep you posted,' said Treadwell.

Robert left them to it and fought his way back through the traffic, reaching his flat at twenty to five. He had not realized how strongly he had been hoping to see his own answerphone blinking cheerfully, and to hear Hilary's voice on it. But it was silent and no one had phoned.