The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery (4 page)

Forcing himself to be objective, he began to read, but he was strongly aware of the fear and desperation that had driven Stephen's words.

The horrors I experienced at Passchendaele – those squalid, screaming deaths in the mud, and the constant rain of shells from the Bosch – will be nothing compared to what is ahead now. I could wish I had died at Passchendaele among good comrades, knowing I died for what was right and just … That would have been an honourable death – you would all have been proud of me and there would have been memorials – church services. My female cousins would have thought of me as romantic and tragic. The boys would have talked of me as a hero.

This was hardly a conventional farewell letter. Michael glanced at his watch. Half past six. He had time to finish it before dinner with his hostess. He resumed reading, and, as if in eerie echo of his thoughts, the next lines also referred to time.

There's no clock in here, but I can feel the minutes ticking away … I'm filled with such despair, I'm afraid for my own sanity … I was mad once before, so I've been told, and I believe I may easily become mad again … Pray for me, please, for I can see no way of escape. And, oh God, if I could see Fosse House again – if I could see the clear pure light when it falls across the fens, and if I could walk up the tree-lined carriageway and see the lamps burning in the windows as dusk falls … Light the lamps for me, though – do so every evening at dusk – for perhaps I may still somehow find my way home.

I promise you – all of you at home – that I am innocent of this charge. Even if I must die at the hands of Niemeyer's butchers, I will find a way to convince you all of my innocence. I must find a way. If it takes twenty-five years – if it takes a century, I must – I
will
– prove my innocence.

Did they light the lamps for you, Stephen? thought Michael, torn with pity. Does someone still do so? Because I saw lights when I came along the drive earlier, and they were faint, strange lights, as if they were the glimmer of lamps from some lost, long-ago world …

Stephen had also written that if it took twenty-five years, or if it took a century, he would prove his innocence. And only fractionally over twenty-five years later, in November 1943, his image had been blurrily captured on a photograph. A century after he had written those words, Michael had seen him walking through the gardens of Fosse House.

It was just after seven o'clock. His hostess would certainly expect punctuality from her guest, however unwelcome and unexpected a guest he might be.

As Michael went in search of the dining-room, he spared a thought for Oxford, and hoped that all was well there.

Here are the promised preliminary notes about the Great War. You'll see that I found some interesting snippets on several of the War Poets – Robert Graves in particular. Apparently he was at school with one of the Gilmore family, which I think is the gang Michael Flint is currently chasing in Norfolk, so we might find a very useful tie-up there.

I do apologize for sending handwritten pages and I hope everything is readable, but you'll appreciate that the current electricity problem means I can't print them out in the usual way or, indeed, even type them. I should mention, at this point, that the power failure really isn't Dr Flint's fault. It was impossible for anyone to predict that Wilberforce the cat would become unaccountably entangled in the electrical wiring in the meter cupboard, resulting in a massive short-circuit which plunged most of College into Cimmerian darkness. Nor had anyone the least notion that the wiring was so interconnected and interdependent as to make a single, isolated short so disastrous.

Remarkably, Wilberforce himself escaped unscathed. I can't help feeling that a lesser animal would have been frizzled to a crisp, but according to eyewitnesses he walked away with nothing worse than singed whiskers and a trodden-on tail – the latter due to a second-year who was coming out of the buttery at the time. (I don't know the details of why the second-year was in the buttery in the first place, and I'm not enquiring, and he isn't one of my students, anyway.)

We're promised that light will be restored soon, but the workings of electricity companies are as intricate as a Tudor Court, so no one has any huge expectation of it. I hear the kitchens have announced a moratorium on the planned lamb and ratatouille, and there's a mass exodus arranged for the evening, either to the Turf or the Rose and Crown.

If your own part of College has been affected, and if you haven't any engagement for this evening, you're most welcome to join my group at the Turf. I'm dining early though, because I want to call on Nell West afterwards – you'll remember that her shop adjoins that excellent antiquarian bookseller in Quire Court. She phoned earlier to say there are two or three useful-looking books on WWI presently in their stock, all by fairly reputable authors, and that one appears to include some letters from a POW officer who had some contact with Siegfried Sassoon. I haven't any of the titles on my own shelves, and Nell has arranged to borrow the books for the evening so I can see if they're worth buying. I should say I'm ever mindful of College budgets and of the Bursar's blood pressure, and the books are actually from the second-hand rather than the antiquarian section (a nice distinction, I always think), so they aren't likely to cost very much.

The fiscal arrangements you propose for my own involvement in all this are very acceptable. It's a terrible world when academics have to consider the sordid subject of coinage, but so it is. I'm sorry if you've heard a rumour that I'm on my beam ends, but I can assure you that any such rumour stems merely from finding myself unaccountably without funds at the Rose and Crown one night, after I had ordered a round of drinks and a platter of sandwiches. Matters were settled honourably the very next day, and the report of my impending bankruptcy was an exaggeration.

Regards,

O.B.

T
he casserole was very good and so was the wine served with it. Michael wondered if Luisa dined like this every night, alone and in semi-state, sipping a distinguished claret, the table laid with damask napkins and silver. It was difficult to imagine her eating off a tray in front of the television. He had not, in fact, seen a television at Fosse House yet.

Over the meal, Luisa made conventional enquiries about Michael's room, then went on to ask about the proposed book.

Michael said, ‘I think the Director of Music is very keen to include a section about the Palestrina Choir. I've only read a little about it myself. My involvement is mostly to do with the poets of the Great War – of how music influenced their outlook and their work.' He hesitated, then said, ‘It sounded as if the Choir had a troubled life.'

She had been picking at her food in a rather desultory fashion, and she now abandoned it altogether. ‘In its early years it achieved considerable success, but its eventual demise was tragic, Dr Flint.'

‘You had an ancestor who was part of it – have I got that right?'

‘Yes. Leonora. Her father was an English Gilmore several generations back. A several-times great uncle of mine, I think. He had married a Belgian girl and they lived in Liège.'

‘The home of the Choir?'

‘Yes, it was within the convent of Sacré-Coeur. Leonora entered the convent's school in 1907 when she was nine.' She glanced at Michael as if to assure herself he was genuinely interested, then went on. ‘By that time the Choir was well established. Wealthy people were wanting to place their daughters in the school because of the music tradition—'

‘And Leonora was in the midst of it,' said Michael thoughtfully.

‘Yes. Her childhood had not been very happy, Dr Flint. Her parents had given her no sense of self-pride, and she grew up believing herself unworthy of the – the warmer emotions of life.'

‘How sad,' said Michael, after a moment.

‘Life is often sad. But she enjoyed Sacré-Coeur – she loved the music and the companionship of the other girls. The music touched something in her she had barely known she possessed.'

A part of Michael's mind was registering that Luisa was almost speaking as if she had first-hand knowledge of Leonora's emotions, but he merely said, ‘She sounds an unusual girl.'

‘Oh, she was.' There was definite eagerness in her voice now. ‘She was only sixteen when the Great War broke out, but she—' She broke off, as if something had interrupted her, and turned her head towards the curtained windows as if she was listening to something. Or is she listening
for
something, thought Michael, slightly startled.

‘Is something wrong, Miss Gilmore?'

‘Did you hear that?' Her face had paled and the bones stood out sharply. ‘Dr Flint, did you hear it?'

‘Only the storm,' said Michael. ‘I did think I heard someone outside earlier, but—'

‘What did you hear? Dr Flint,
what did you hear
?'

‘Just vague noises,' said Michael, concerned by the note of urgency in her voice, but unwilling to worry her by saying he thought someone had tried the front door. ‘It's a wild night, isn't it, and—'

He stopped, because now there were unquestionably sounds outside, and they were not from the storm. Someone was walking along the garden path immediately outside the dining-room window. He looked across at Luisa, saw that her eyes had dilated with fear. Aware of a beat of apprehension he got up from the table and went towards the window.

At once Luisa said, ‘Don't open the curtains.'

‘I'm only going to see if anyone is out there.'

‘There's no need,' she said in a strained voice, then sat up a little straighter, as if making a physical attempt to draw about her the remnants of composure. ‘You mustn't open the door—'

‘Miss Gilmore, I'm sure I heard someone. And when I arrived here earlier I thought there was someone in the gardens. Let me take a quick look outside—'

‘No,' she said sharply. ‘No, please don't. It's quite all right. This house is a good two hundred years old. I'm afraid it's a bit creaky.' Her colour was returning, and her voice sounded normal again. ‘Houses can be a bit like people. Creaky and sometimes erratic.' A sudden, surprisingly sweet smile showed briefly.

‘I've often thought that,' said Michael. He was just trying to decide whether he ought to investigate the footsteps anyway, or whether he should try to nudge her back on to the subject of Leonora and the Choir, when she said, ‘Have you had enough to eat? There's cheese and fruit left out in the kitchen if you want. And coffee can be filtered very quickly.'

It was a polite dismissal. Intruders, imaginary or real, had been relegated to their place. So Michael said, ‘I've had more than enough, thank you, and it was very good. But a cup of coffee would be welcome. I'll take it into the library if that's all right. I can put in another hour's work, perhaps more. Can I fetch the coffee? Bring yours in here?'

‘That would be kind of you. The filter machine only needs switching on. There will be milk in the fridge. I take mine black, with no sugar.'

Michael nodded and found his way to the kitchen.

He took his hostess's cup to her, but before pouring his own he went up to his bedroom to phone Nell. He had suddenly found that he wanted to hear her voice very much. If anyone could dispel Fosse House's eeriness, it would be Nell. With that in mind, he told her about hearing the whispering on his arrival.

‘Michael, my love, you're so suggestible, you'd hear ghosts in a supermarket car park,' said Nell. ‘I'll bet you drove up to that dark old house – it is a dark old house, I suppose? Yes, I thought it would be – and you saw it as the setting for cobweb-draped Victorian skeletons, or the background to somebody's graveyard elegy, not to mention doomed Gothic heroines.'

‘I wish,' said Michael, already feeling better, ‘that you weren't able to walk in and out of my mind quite so easily.'

‘It's always a nice journey though,' she said, and Michael heard the smile in her voice. ‘What did the whispers say?'

‘They were quite macabre,' said Michael, hesitating.

‘If a dark old house has a whispering voice, it's bound to be a macabre one. Seriously, what did the whispers say?'

‘About trying to hold on to sanity – that seemed to be the main burden of the song. And about not being caught, for sanity's sake.'

‘Those are quite sibilant words,' said Nell thoughtfully. ‘I'll bet what you heard was simply the storm wind blowing down the guttering.'

‘I expect you're right,' said Michael. ‘Thanks, my love. You've put me back in touch with reality. You always do put my feet back on the ground.'

‘Well, you send my head into the clouds quite often, so that balances out.'

‘I'll tell you about something I've found here that might do that properly,' he said. ‘No, it isn't a Van Dyck or a Delft dinner service – it's quite an unusual framed sketch with the date 1917 on it.' He briefly considered whether to mention the unnerving fact that Stephen Gilmore appeared in a photograph of twenty-five years later, and decided that the whispering was more than enough gothic content for one phone call. Instead he described the sketch carefully, and was aware of Nell's instant interest.

‘Did you say Holzminden? Michael, are you sure about that?'

‘Yes, I am. What exactly is Holzminden? Or should I say, where is it? Because it sounds like a place rather than someone's name.'

‘It is a place. It's a town, or it might even be a city, in Germany – Lower Saxony, I think. I'll have to look it up. But I think it was originally one of those medieval settlements that existed under the rule of a princedom or a dukedom. Turreted castles and stone arches, and Wolfenbuttels, I expect.
But
there was a prisoner-of-war camp there in the First World War—'