Ghost Song (6 page)

‘I thought the foyer would be bigger,' said Hilary as they went through a heavy swing door, the torch creating a triangle of light. ‘But then Drury Lane's foyer isn't very big, so if it's good enough for— What's up there?'

‘Stairs to the dress circle. Over there, on the left, is the equivalent of the box office, and the door to the main auditorium's straight ahead. Sorry if I'm starting to sound like a coach-tour operator.'

Robert pushed the auditorium door open; it was on a swing mechanism which protested a bit but opened reasonably easily. Hilary went through, then stopped just inside, staring at the rows of tip-up seats still in place and at the faded gilt paintwork.

‘Is it as you imagined it?' said Robert after a moment.

‘I don't know. I don't really know what I expected—well, other than finding the Glamis monster or Bluebeard's murder chamber.' This was said with a fair attempt at flippancy. ‘But that's Shona's fault, of course. “You can go anywhere you like in the castle, but whatever you do, don't open the seventh door…” And so you instantly want to open that door more than anything.'

‘Or in this case demolish a wall.'

‘We aren't going to do that, are we?'

‘Not yet,' said Robert.

‘I hope that's a joke.'

‘So do I.'

‘But now I'm here,' said Hilary, still staring about her, ‘I don't think the Tarleton's got a monster to its name.'

‘No monsters at all,' said Robert, and then, to see how she would respond, said, ‘There are maybe a few ghosts,' and was absurdly pleased when she said, ‘Yes, the ghosts are definitely here, aren't they? All those singers and musicians and dancers and backstage people…' She glanced at Robert. ‘And the man who prowled the streets and hid inside the old London fog. Whoever he was, I have a feeling he's still here sometimes.' She frowned. ‘Can we get onto the stage from here?'

‘Yes, there are steps on the right. You'd better have the spare torch.'

Hilary took the torch and walked down the centre aisle, occasionally reaching out to touch the worn surface of a chair. Halfway down she looked up at the boxes at the side of the stage, and stopped abruptly. Robert saw her expression alter, and said, ‘Hilary? Is something wrong?'

Hilary was shining the torch onto the box. For a moment she did not speak, and then, in a low voice, she said, ‘I think there's someone up there.'

Robert's heart skipped several beats and although he was not aware of having moved, he discovered he was standing next to her, holding her arm protectively. ‘There's no one there,' he said, peering into the shadows. ‘The place is empty.'

‘There
is
someone there.' She moved the torch. ‘He's stepped back, but he's still there. He's watching us.'

Robert shone his own torch onto the box and for the fraction of a second thought he saw the shadowy figure of a man wearing a long coat and a deep-brimmed hat pulled well down to hide his face…

He moved the torch again and then, with a gasp of relief, said, ‘It's all right—it's just the fall of the curtains inside the box. Can you see how they sort of bunch together on the right? It does look like a man's figure. That's what you saw.'

They were not exactly whispering, but they were speaking in low voices as if afraid of being overheard. Robert was aware of a stir of unease, because when he left the theatre after his survey, those curtains had been pushed so far back against the wall they had been barely visible. He had noticed it particularly, because he had gone into the box to inspect the timberwork. But now those same curtains were in a different position: three quarters drawn and hiding most of the box's interior. Had someone been in since the survey and moved them? But Hilary said no one ever had the keys.

To say any of this would only frighten her, so in an ordinary voice, he said, ‘It's an optical illusion. Like when you see faces in cloud formations or cracks in a ceiling that look like a map of the world.'

Hilary said, in a very soft whisper, ‘But what about the shadow?'

The shadow. Robert saw it then: a blurred outline fell on the wall of the box nearest the stage and was unmistakably man-shaped. Exactly as if someone really was standing there, looking down at them. And curtains, surely, did not cast shadows…

To dispel the sudden apprehension, in a challenging voice he called out, ‘Hello? Is someone there?'

The echoes picked up his voice and bounced it round the empty auditorium, and Robert waited, his eyes still on the box, but nothing stirred. It was impossible to see more than a small portion of the interior, but when he shone the torch again he thought there was a flicker of movement, as if someone might have dodged back out of sight. He remembered the boxes were quite deep; it would be possible for one person—for two or three people—to stand up there unseen. But whatever the shadow had been, it had vanished.

‘I'm sure there's no one there,' he said at last. ‘All the doors are locked, and we locked the stage door behind us when we came in—unless someone's got another set of keys no one knows about?'

‘I don't think that's very likely,' said Hilary, looking round a bit uneasily. ‘I think we'd know if anyone was going in and out and we keep a careful record of anyone borrowing the keys. We do have quite a lot of freelancers who come and go all the time, and there're three or four locals who come in to help with mailings and exhibitions and things like that—mostly retired people who want to earn a few pounds and enjoy the contact. But I don't think any of them would be able to take the keys without it being noticed.'

‘What about the owner?'

‘Yes, the owner must have keys, but I can't see him—or her—creeping round the place in the dark,' said Hilary. ‘Other than that, there's no way anyone could get in here.'

But supposing someone was in here all along? Or supposing what we've just seen doesn't need keys to get in?
Stop it, thought Robert, angrily.

‘I expect you're right about it being an optical illusion,' went on Hilary a bit shakily. She did not sound entirely convinced of this; she sounded more as if she was seizing gratefully on a just about credible explanation. ‘There's also the point that this place reverberates like the inside of a drum which means we'd have heard doors opening or footsteps. I'm sorry I spooked you like that, Robert. It'll teach me not to read melodramatic memoirs. I'll bet he was a closet ghost-story writer, that old actor.'

‘This place is enough to conjure up any amount of imaginary ghosts anyway,' said Robert. ‘Hilary, I was thinking—if this place was really closed in 1914, are you sure it wasn't simply because of the outbreak of war?'

‘Not absolutely sure, but it's not very likely,' said Hilary. ‘People wanted the theatres to stay open, in fact the government took measures to keep them going as much as possible. It brought an air of normality to life and it was good for morale. Some of the theatres were turned into Red Cross centres or army clubs, but that was a good while after 1914. And quite a lot of the performers put on shows to encourage the young men to enlist. I've got a few recordings from that era—they're on vinyl and dreadfully scratchy, but hearing them gives you the most marvellous feeling of touching the past.'

Robert suddenly wanted very much to listen to these scratchy old recordings with Hilary. He said, cautiously, that he would like to hear them.

‘Yes, of course,' she said at once, sounding pleased. ‘Are those steps safe?'

‘Yes, but they protest a bit.'

‘I don't know about protesting, they creak like the crack of doom,' said Hilary, going cautiously up onto the stage and peering into the dark void of the auditorium. ‘I wish I could see it as it was a hundred years ago,' she said. ‘Lit up and filled with people and music and noise. Is this the trap? Oh yes, I see. I suppose it is a trap, is it? It isn't just a makeshift repair over a bit of damaged stage?'

‘It's a bit too contained for that,' said Robert, following her onto the stage and putting the haversack down near the trap's outline. ‘And there's a pulley mechanism with a hand winch in the wings that I'm fairly sure would have operated it.'

‘It's bigger than I was visualizing,' said Hilary, still studying the outline at her feet. ‘But the name's the clue, of course. Anyone being taken down by it would be lying prone. How are we going to get it open?'

‘It'll just be a question of getting the nails out and then lifting it clear,' he said. ‘Could you hold my torch as well as your own? Just shine both beams straight onto the section of wood.'

He was aware of a mounting apprehension, but he laid out chisels and hammers and, without looking over his shoulder, applied himself to levering out the nails. It was more difficult than he had expected and it took longer than he had bargained for. The nails had rusted into place and several of them broke and had to be dug out with pliers. Robert swore several times and each time he did so the old building picked up his voice and bounced the words back at him as if mischievously enjoying them. He found himself wanting to look back into the box—they were much nearer to it here, of course—but when he did so there were only shadows and an old chair no one had bothered to tidy away. And the curtains, he said to himself. The curtains that somebody's moved since I was here two days ago and cast that man-shaped shadow.

In the end, he managed to get enough nails free to force the section of timber partly up and slide the chisel into place to form a lever. He was not sure he could have done all this on his own; the sound of the pliers scraping on the old timbers echoed eerily through the auditorium and several times Hilary glanced nervously into the darkness of the theatre. The ghosts really don't like what we're doing, he thought. If it comes to that,
I
don't like what we're doing.

The wood came away suddenly, splintering slightly as it did so, showering fragments everywhere, and Hilary, who had been kneeling on the stage, holding the torches, crawled nearer to have a better look.

For a moment neither of them spoke, and then Hilary said, ‘That's not quite what we were expecting, is it?'

‘No,' said Robert, staring down.

Directly beneath the rectangle of wood was a heavy steel plate, almost flush with the stage's surface. Robert tapped the steel with the chisel and the sound reverberated dully but the steel plate did not move.

He said, ‘I thought we'd see a sort of wide shaft going all the way down below the stage.'

‘So did I. Won't this be part of the trap's mechanism? The floor—the bit the actor actually lay on before being sent down to the depths?'

‘I think it must be,' said Robert, still frowning at the thing. ‘Yes, it would have to be, wouldn't it? Like a long platform. They'd leave it up here in place.'

‘Is there any means of operating it?' said Hilary hopefully. ‘Winding it down? You said there was a pulley or something?'

‘Yes, but…' Robert took one of the torches and shone it onto the sides of the steel oblong.

‘What is it?'

‘If you look closely you can see where an L-shaped bolt has been put on each side, and then hammered into place.'

‘Yes, I do see it,' said Hilary, having peered more closely. ‘We can't get that out, can we?'

‘Not without an oxyacetylene welder, or smashing up half the stage.' He sat back on his heels. ‘At some time in its history somebody was very determined indeed to seal up every possible access to the vault below the stage.'

At once there was the sensation that the ghosts had crept nearer and were peering over the shoulders of the two intruders, and were nodding their heads wisely to one another, saying, ‘Yes, that's what happened all those years ago. The stage vault was sealed and never meant to be reopened. We saw it all, we know why it was done…'

Hilary shivered. ‘Have we seen enough, d'you think?'

‘Yes. Wait while I hammer this back into place.' He did this with new nails from the haversack, gathering up the original ones and putting them into a side pocket. It was not difficult to realign the splintered sections of wood: a close inspection would show the new nails and the slight damage, but anyone examining the trap would probably assume it was a small repair recently found necessary.

They went back down the creaking old steps to the back of the auditorium. Robert had just reached for the handle on the foyer door when Hilary looked back. ‘Listen.'

But Robert had already heard it. Footsteps. Somewhere in the empty theatre someone was walking about. The sounds were soft but unmistakable.

Keeping his voice low, he said, ‘It's coming from the dress circle.' He opened the foyer door and they stepped out of the auditorium. The old mechanism of the door sounded shockingly loud.

‘Do we make a run for it or stand our ground?' said Hilary softly.

‘It might be someone with a perfectly lawful reason for being here,' said Robert, knowing they were both remembering the half-glimpsed figure in the box. ‘Are you sure there isn't a night watchman?'