The Outsiders (14 page)

This
state of affairs had continued after Deacon’s return to Aldwark and
his new, official position on the museum staff. The only difference
now was that he seemed unconcerned by the continuing reports of
sightings, considering them a part of background noise at the
museum which barely impinged on his consciousness.

All that
changed on that warm spring afternoon six months after his
arrival.

My amused
expression as I regarded him across the checked cloth, tea and
cakes did little to distract my friend from his excited
chatter.

“
I honestly thought you were all having me on you know, all
those years of stories and apparent sightings and I never saw a
single thing. I just thought that it had started as a joke and then
no one had the courage to admit it was all a creation…” he shook
his head with a wry smile as he took a long draft of hot
tea.

“
...until today.” He stared into his cup for a moment. “I was
sat at my desk, not doing anything really, just staring out of the
window towards the old house in the park behind the museum, you
know, the Fawcett town house. Looking at the daffodils and
generally feeling very pleased about the way things had turned out.
You know, with the job and coming back to Aldwark. It is everything
I ever wanted, everything I dreamed about from the first time I
stepped into that museum. And now it is all mine.”

He looked
up a little self-consciously. “Sorry, that sounds a little smug and
I’m rambling as well. Anyway, I was sat looking out across the park
and I heard the door open at the bottom of the stairs. I thought
perhaps you had arrived a little early and so I rose and went to
the door to greet you.”

His was
looking into the distance over my shoulder as he recounted the
encounter. “I was stood just inside the door and was about to move
onto the landing but was momentarily distracted by a tray of finds
that had been delivered by the curator earlier this morning. Most
of it was the normal rubbish that people bring in from their walks
but on top was a large sherd of Samian and I was about to pick it
up and show it to you when she walked right past the door. She was
so close that if I had had my wits about me I could have reached
out and touched her.”

He shook
his head in a slightly dazed fashion as if the memory of the
apparition had physically stunned him. “I don’t quite know what
happened to me. It was so unexpected. I didn’t move, didn’t say a
word. I just watched as she drifted past and continued up the
stairs to the next floor.”

“
Drifted?” I remarked on his choice of words. “Was she floating
then, could you see her feet?”

“
Oh no, no, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry, that was a poor
choice of words given the circumstances. No, she was walking just
like you and I except...except of course neither you nor I could
ever walk in such a graceful manner. Such modes of locomotion are
reserved only for the fairer sex. She glided across the floor like
an angel or...well yes a ghost I suppose but that wasn’t it. It was
just that she trod that landing so gracefully, the way that only a
girl of perfect bearing could tread. With only the softest pad of
her step as if she were barefoot. Such grace, such poise. Truly she
is not a ghost but an angel.”

Deacon’s
rapt expression showed he had been touched far more than I would
have expected by the vision on the stairs. He had always struck me
as a somewhat overly romantic fellow but this reaction seemed far
more extreme than I would have expected. I felt a momentary twinge
of concern for the archaeologist but dismissed it almost
immediately as I considered that, in all the years that Maud had
been haunting the museum, not once had any harm befallen anyone who
had encountered her.

“
Did you see her face?” I enquired.

“
No, no, she had her head turned away from me all the time and
by the time I got my wits back she had already climbed to the
second floor. I went after her, right to the very top of the
building but...well, you know the story as well as I. There was no
sign of her. She climbed the stairs and disappeared.”

I smiled
warmly at him. “Of course you realise this is the end of an era
don’t you?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
You were almost famous at the museum. Didn’t you know? They
were still talking about you even before you came back to work
here; the only person never to have seen the girl on the stairs.
Now that you have finally seen her we will have to consign that
particular tale to the archives.”

Deacon
smiled briefly at the thought but then returned immediately to his
subject. “Who is she Doctor?” he asked earnestly. “What happened to
her and why is she condemned to climb those stairs for all
eternity?”

“
Well, I’m not sure about all eternity Matthew,” I laughed
indulgently, “after all she has only been seen for the last century
or so.”

He
ignored my attempts at a joke. “But someone must know something
about her. She has been seen by almost everyone at the museum,
surely someone must have done some research to find out who she
was?”

I shook
my head and finished the last of my tea. “Not that I am aware of. I
know old Sullivan did a cursory examination of the archives many
years ago when he first came to the museum, but I gather that when
he found nothing he returned to more interesting subjects and
decided it was just one of those mysteries that was destined never
to be solved.”

My
companion looked shocked at this, almost scornful. “How can anyone
think that this isn’t interesting? This is fascinating, it is a
genuine mystery and I am sure there must be some explanation. If
she is a ghost then she has to have been a living person once.
There must be records somewhere of what happened to her. All I need
to do is look hard enough. I will find out who she was. I
must.”

I had
thought to try to dissuade the young man from becoming too immersed
in this mystery. No good could come of such an obsessive quest and
I did not doubt that it was in the nature of the archaeologist with
his notions of romantic honour to pursue this search to the
detriment of all other tasks.

I should
have said something then, I see that now. It is an omission that
will haunt me every single day for the rest of my life. But for
some reason at that moment I chose to keep my own council. Perhaps
it was his forthright determination, perhaps, conversely, the
thought that it was something that would pass after a few days of
failure. And if he did succeed, well, I would be just as interested
as the next man in finally hearing the true story of the girl on
the stairs.

And so I
said nothing more on the subject. We discussed a few other topics
of mutual interest involving the museum and acquaintances around
the town but it was clear that the act of revealing his encounter
with the ghost and the subsequent statements of intent had served
to crystallise Matthew Deacon’s determination, to focus his mind
upon the task at hand and so, in short order, we parted with
declarations of mutual friendship and promises to meet again the
following week for further discussion over tea and
cakes.

2

We did
indeed meet the following week, although my friend seemed
distracted during our afternoon tea and it was clear that he could
raise little enthusiasm for our normal discourse. Mindful of his
intense interest in the supernatural inhabitant of the stairwell I
had thought that perhaps this would be the sole topic of
conversation but for the first twenty minutes or so he made no
mention of his researches and much of the time seemed more
interested in the contents of his teacup than in his companion sat
across the small table.

Eventually I decided that the only way to salvage something
of the afternoon was to raise the subject myself. I hoped this
might provoke a more forthright response but, even on this most
topical of subjects his responses were at best half hearted and it
was left to me to carry the conversation as best I could while he
limited himself to single word replies and long, thoughtful
silences. Under the circumstances it was almost a relief when he
declared, upon the hour, that he must return to his office and
continue his work.

Over the
next month or so our contact was slight. Deacon seemed completely
engrossed in his research, the subject of which was by now clear to
everyone in the museum. I decided against inviting him out for tea
again and instead limited myself to visits to his laboratory where
I could attempt to engage in conversation whilst he continued his
enquiries amongst the books and papers he had secured from the
archives and the local library. My initial concern that he might be
neglecting his other work and so put his position at risk with
regard to the directors of the museum and the town corporation,
proved ill founded as it seemed he was quite capable of undertaking
both his paid employ and his own private researches at the same
time to the detriment of neither. But it was also clear from his
comments and general demeanor, his short-tempered replies and
spontaneous declarations of disgust that he was having no success
in his quest to identify the mysterious girl.

Try as he
might, Deacon could find no record of events or persons that might
account for the apparition. No stories of Georgian feuds ending, as
they invariably did, in the murder of those most innocent. No tales
of unrequited Victorian love whose final act was the tragic demise
by terminal self harm of the rejected maiden, cast aside and ruined
by a callous ‘gentleman’. No Edwardian crimes of passion whose
epilogue was a short walk to the gallows on a frosty autumn morn
for a man who had already consigned his wife to her eternal rest.
Not even a wartime melodrama, played out against a backdrop of
blackout curtains and rousing Churchillian speeches, making liberal
use of arsenic or cyanide to bring matters to an abrupt and fatal
conclusion. No crimes, no accidents, no history of any kind. For
all his many hours of research in the box files and journals, the
books and diaries that filled the dimly lit attic spaces of the
museum, Deacon could find nothing that could help in his quest to
identify the ghostly girl who had started to form the focus of a
dangerous obsession.

Just how
dangerous we would not realise until it was far too
late.

Had
Deacon’s obsession limited itself to his vain attempts to uncover
the corporeal origins of the ghostly girl then it is possible that
things may have resolved themselves in something less than tragedy.
It was certainly the case that the longer he delved into the
archives the more he neglected his other researches and the work
for which he was handsomely paid. It is also inevitable that, had
things continued along this path then, matters may well have
reached the point where his employers took an unhealthy interest in
his activities. But for now, perhaps unfortunately given the
eventual outcome, the rest of the staff endeavoured to ensure that
any lapses or mistakes on the part of their archaeologist were
dealt with promptly before they gave rise to comment or
complaint.

But it
was not in Matthew Deacon’s nature to hammer away at a problem
forever without resolution. Equally it was most certainly not in
his nature to abandon a task when he was so sure that it could be
resolved to his satisfaction if only he could approach it in the
right manner. And this was a task to which he had set his whole
heart and soul over these last few months. Though I did not know it
at the time, he therefore concluded that his continuing
investigations amongst the parchments and papers of half a dozen
institutions in the town would bring no satisfactory conclusion to
his enquiries and so, after one last fruitless examination of the
church records, he decided to embark upon another, more direct
course of action.

We had
last met at the museum in mid July when he had railed at great
length against the poor state of the archives and the
thoughtlessness of long dead diarists who had seen fit to ignore
the tragic death of a girl so young and innocent. Where exactly he
got these ideas from is not clear to me and seemed to be more the
results of a fevered brain than any annotated research. As a
result, before the afternoon had drawn to a close, I found myself
arguing more forcefully than ever before that the archaeologist
should take a step back from his obsessive enquiries and adopt a
more measured attitude to what was, after all, a perfectly harmless
phenomena that had been in existence since long before either of us
had first entered the museum and which was almost inevitably bound
to continue long after we had left this life. Hoping to lighten the
atmosphere I might even have attempted a joke along the lines that
we would surely find the answer to all these questions when we had
joined the young lady in the afterlife but that I was content that
such a resolution would be many, many years hence.

My
comments, it seems, were ill judged and only served to inflame my
friend’s passions on the subject. Consequently, whilst no physical
assault was made, I was forced to withdraw from the laboratory
without further reconciliation in the face of a most forthright and
brutal verbal assault on my character. I will admit that as a
result I decided to wash my hands of the matter for some days but,
as is my nature in these advancing years, I quickly forgot the
slight hurt that had been caused by Deacon’s rash accusations and
resolved that the best way to bring matters to a respectable and
satisfactory conclusion was to attempt to aid him in his researches
to the best of my ability. At least in such circumstances I would
be able to maintain some slight control over matters and reassure
myself that young Matthew was not further endangering his position
at the museum or his physical well being.