Ghost Song (57 page)

Shona pressed back against the cell wall, her hands clenched, ready to strike them if they tried to come any nearer, and began to scream.

Shortly after three a.m. Madeleine suggested they all try to get a few hours' sleep.

‘We'll have to be giving statements and filling in all kinds of official forms in the morning,' she said. ‘So we may as well get some rest. You can stay down here on the settee, Robert, or you can have the room Shona Seymour had.'

‘You have the bedroom, Robert,' said Hilary. ‘If no one minds, I think I'd like to stay down here. Would that be all right, Madeleine? I'll just curl up on the settee—it's beautifully warm here.' She did not say that the thought of returning to the bedroom where she had been so abruptly woken by that eerie music was more than she could face tonight, but she thought Madeleine understood.

‘Of course,' she said. ‘My girl who helps in the house will be here around eight. Robert, I'm sorry I can't offer you pyjamas or shaving things, but I think there might be a spare toothbrush somewhere.'

Robert said, ‘I think I could sleep on a length of clothes line tonight. You're being very kind and I'm very sorry you've had all this disturbance.'

‘I seem to have survived it,' said Madeleine. ‘I daresay most of it's my own fault for keeping that Gothic pile in London closed up all these years. Any sensible person would have ignored that absurd will of my father's and sold it or hired it out long since.' But she frowned slightly, and Hilary saw the brief twist of pain she had seen last night. There's still something she's not telling us, she thought.

‘There's a bit more disturbance you'll have to deal with, I'm afraid,' said Robert. ‘It's actually in the Gothic pile, and it's my fault.' He glanced at Hilary, and then said, ‘Last night I knocked down part of an underground wall in your theatre.'

‘You did it!' said Hilary. ‘I didn't think you would when it came to it.'

Madeleine was looking at them both, clearly puzzled. ‘Robert, how do you mean, you knocked down a wall? In a car accident or something?'

‘No. I borrowed the keys from the Harlequin and had a copy made without anyone knowing,' said Robert. ‘Entirely unprofessional and also criminal.'

‘Dear me, how very enterprising of you. Why did you do that?' She did not sound angry, she sounded faintly amused and intrigued.

‘Because,' said Robert, ‘I was absolutely convinced there was something odd in that place—and that it was behind a cellar wall. At some time someone had sealed that area up very thoroughly indeed. I don't know when the sealing was done, but I couldn't account for it. I'm a surveyor,' he said, ‘so if I find a mystery in a property, I want to know what it hides.'

‘It was that wall that kept disconcerting Shona,' said Hilary. ‘She kept identifying it with a wall at her childhood home—Grith House. And behind the wall at Grith House was the cousin she had murdered—Elspeth. At least, that's what she said. She was terrified Elspeth might one day be discovered.'

‘If it's true she was probably driven mad from living with that fear for years,' said Madeleine thoughtfully. ‘How dreadful and tragic.'

‘I didn't know about Shona's cousin when I looked at the Tarleton's wall, of course,' said Robert. ‘But Shona
was
defensive about the place, and that, together with the ban on any reopening—well, I decided to find out for myself what was behind the wall and under the stage.'

‘So you knocked down the wall.'

‘Only a small part of it,' said Robert, then, speaking very seriously, he said, ‘I will give you the appropriate name and address of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors if you want to make an official complaint about what I did. You're perfectly entitled to do that.'

‘I've never bothered over much about royal institutions and officialdom,' said Madeleine. ‘Let's hear the rest of the tale.'

‘I got enough bricks out to see through to the under-stage area,' said Robert. ‘And—this part's a bit distressing, so—'

‘Robert, in the last few hours I've dealt with a mad killer prowling through my house!' said Madeleine. ‘I shan't jib at an ancient mystery behind a wall.'

‘At some time in the distant past,' said Robert, ‘someone had put a—a dead body in the Tarleton's cellar and bricked it up.'

‘Good God,' said Madeleine, staring at him. ‘How appalling.'

‘Are you all right?' said Hilary anxiously.

‘I'll let you know when I've heard the end of the story. But I'm an old lady, Hilary, and we get fairly used to the idea of death. Other people's deaths, at least. Robert, I know we've only just met but I wouldn't have thought you were at all the kind of person to get tangled up with dead bodies, never mind smashing down walls in other people's properties.'

‘I'm not,' said Robert. ‘But on this occasion… Anyway, I found the body. It wasn't particularly grisly, by the way, just rather sad, and I reported it to the police.'

‘Did you really? I suspect a great many people in that situation would have put the bricks back as neatly as possible, got out fast, and hoped no one would ever find out what had been done.'

‘Throwing the illicit key in the Thames,' added Hilary.

‘I nearly did,' confessed Robert. ‘But—this will sound ridiculously sentimental—it was the body itself that stopped me. I don't mean physically—sorry, Hilary, it didn't suddenly sit perkily up like a horror film—I mean mentally. Emotionally. I simply couldn't brick it up again and leave it lying down there in the dark.' He looked back at Madeleine. ‘I did wonder if it might have something to do with the reason for the theatre being closed all these years.'

‘I'm wondering the same thing,' said Madeleine. ‘But my father's request was that it stayed closed for fifty years after his death. So it would have had to be a very important dead body.'

‘True. I don't know if it can ever be identified,' said Robert.

‘I expect they'll try, however. What an extraordinary thing. My father really did leave a legacy and a half to me, didn't he? But thank you for explaining all that, Robert, and for being so honest.' She smiled at him. ‘I'm sorry about the poor soul who was shut away down there all this time, but I can't say I'm particularly upset over a few bricks being knocked out in a cellar. I daresay it can be rebuilt if necessary.' She stood up. ‘I really am going to bed now, my dears,' she said. ‘Sleep well.'

It was a good feeling to lie on the deep soft settee with the fire dying down, and to know that Robert was upstairs. It was astonishing that he really had broken through that intriguing old wall and found a body after all. But it had to be a body, thought Hilary, smiling as she drifted into sleep. Anything less would have been a let-down.

Who had the body been? Could it even be Toby? But Hilary did not want it to be Toby: she did not want to discover he had lain down there in the dusty darkness all these years. Stupid, because it could not matter to him where his body lay. But she would still rather it was not Toby.

A thin sunlight trickled into the big kitchen next morning. Madeleine's ‘girl who helps' turned out to be a cheerful soul who clattered round, scrambling eggs, grilling bacon and brewing coffee. It was surprisingly comfortable to sit at the kitchen table with Robert and eat vast quantities of food. Robert looked slightly raffish because he had not been able to shave; Hilary found this deeply attractive, but she was starting to feel too anxious about Shona to give much attention to this.

‘You're too nice about her,' said Robert when Hilary expressed this concern.

‘She's my boss.'

‘From what you told me last night, she's a psychotic murderess,' he said.

Madeleine, who was sitting composedly drinking her own coffee, said, ‘She's certainly a very disturbed lady.'

‘You saw that?'

‘Well, I thought as soon as I met her that she wasn't entirely calm,' said Madeleine. ‘I think that's why I trusted you rather than Shona last night, Hilary. When you told me to lock myself in my bedroom, I mean.'

Shortly after eleven Hilary went upstairs to collect her coat and handbag before Robert drove them to Upper Leigh, to the police station. The hall was on the west side of the house and the morning sun had not worked its way round here so the hall, which only had narrow windows by the door, was rather dim and shadowy. Hilary paused at the foot of the stairs to study a framed photograph of a group of people, hoping they might be from Madeleine's family—specifically hoping her father might be one of the group. She had got as far as identifying the clothes as probably belonging to the mid-1920s, and was enjoying looking at the faces and speculating about them when there was the sound of a car stopping in the lane outside the house, its door being opened and closed, then the sound of it driving off. Footsteps came slowly down the gravel path. Hilary glanced towards the door, assuming it was a chance caller for Madeleine, hoping it would not delay their departure, and then felt the quiet hall with its scents of age and polish, blur and shiver all round her.

Whoever was walking along the gravel path towards the house was singing softly, in the way a man might whistle to keep up his spirits or to keep himself company.

But the song the unknown caller was singing was the song Hilary had heard in the dark old Tarleton Music Hall with Robert. It was the song Shona had played on the old gramophone last night. Toby Chance's ‘The Ghost Walks'.

C
ALEY WAS EXTREMELY
nervous by the time the taxi drew up outside Levels House. It had been a worrisome journey; he had spent most of it in trying to work out exactly what he would say when he reached his destination and he was still very unsure about that. He also hoped very fervently that it would not be what he thought of as a grand house.

It was not until the train drew into Castle Cary station that it suddenly occurred to him he might not be Madeleine Ferrelyn's only visitor. Shona Seymour would have received that letter two—no, three—days ago. Supposing that was the reason for her slightly puzzling absence from the Harlequin office? This possibility sent a wave of panic through him. What would he do if Miss Seymour was already at Levels House? But he had not come this far to back out now, so he got a taxi from the small taxi rank outside the station, and gave the address.

The house, when they reached it, was not grand, but it was quite large and you could see at once that it had been lived in by people who were not wildly wealthy, but who did not have to worry over-much about money. Caley had not really expected anything less, but he still had to fight against a feeling of panic all over again, because people like himself did not knock at the doors of houses such as this one, and coolly request admittance. He paid the taxi driver, careful to add a modest tip, and it was not until the man had driven off that he noticed the two cars parked in the drive. Might Shona Seymour really be here, then? He stood very still, trying to decide what to do.

If it had not been for the ten-mile journey to the railway station, at this point he really would have fled back to London. But he reminded himself that he had no real reason to be afraid of Miss Seymour and he had a perfect right to be here if he chose. He straightened his collar and brushed down his jacket, but as he walked towards the house he realized he was humming a snatch of one of the Tarleton's songs. It was a nervous habit, but it was something that always gave him confidence, almost as if the Tarleton people—Caley's own people—were with him and as if they were saying: it's all right; we're around you, we're helping you along. Today they said: you've come here to protect us, remember that. And you have as much right as anyone to be here, remember that, as well.