This House is Haunted (27 page)

“He’s behind you,” said Eustace and I spun round once again, my heart racing, but no, there was no one there.

“Why can’t I see him?” I cried. “Why can’t I see him too?”

“He’s gone outside now,” said Eustace quietly, sinking under the sheets. “But he’s still in the house. He says he won’t leave no matter how much she wants him to. He won’t go where he’s supposed to go, not while you’re still here.”

Chapter Twenty

“A
GHOST
?”
ASKED
Reverend Deacons, smiling at me, his expression such that he thought perhaps I was making fun of him.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” I said. “But I’m convinced of it.”

He shook his head and indicated a pew on the left-hand side of the church, the Westerley family pew, the one where the children and I sat every Sunday. There was a brass plaque pinned to the corner, inscribed with the name of a Westerley antecedent, the dates of his birth and death. Seventeenth century. They went back that far at least then. “My dear girl,” said the vicar, sitting at a small remove from me. “The idea is fanciful.”

“Why must it be? What is it Shakespeare says, Reverend? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Shakespeare was in the business of entertaining an audience,” he replied. “Shakespeare was nothing more than a simple writer. Yes, in one of his plays, a ghost might appear on the ramparts, naming his killer, demanding vengeance. Or attending a feast to haunt his own murderer. But these things exist
to titillate and send a shiver down the spines of the paying crowd. In real life, Miss Caine, I’m afraid that ghosts are very much overrated. They are the stuff of fictions and of whimsical minds.”

“It’s not so long ago that men of your ilk believed in witches and superstition,” I pointed out.

“Medieval times,” he said, waving a hand in the air to dismiss the notion. “This is 1867. The Church has come a long way since then.”

“Women were held underwater on suspicion of being witches,” I stated bitterly. “If they drowned, they were proven innocent but had lost their lives to the accusation. If they survived, then their guilt was proven and they were burned at the stake. Either way, they were killed. Women, of course. Not men. No one questioned such beliefs in those days. And now you call me fanciful. You do not see the irony?”

“Miss Caine, the modern Church cannot be held responsible for the superstitions of the past.”

I sighed. It had probably been a poor decision on my part to come here but I was at my wits’ end and had wondered whether a vicar might come to my assistance. In truth, I had never been a particularly religious person. I had observed, of course, and attended services on Sundays. But to my shame, I had always been one of those lost souls whose mind wandered a little during the homily and who paid scant attention during the reading of the lesson. What did it say of me that now, in a moment of such crisis, I turned to the Church for help? And what did it say of the Church that, when I sought consolation, it could do nothing but laugh in my face?

“We know so little of the world,” I continued, determined not to allow myself to be treated like an hysterical woman. “We
know not how we got here or where we will go after we leave. How can we be so convinced that there is no such thing as lost souls, half alive and half dead? How can you be so certain that it is a nonsense?”

“This is a product of living at Gaudlin Hall,” he replied, shaking his head. “Your mind is open to delusion due to the unhappy history of that place.”

“And what do you know of Gaudlin Hall?” I asked. “When did you last set foot there?”

“Your tone is combative, Miss Caine,” he replied and I could sense that he was trying hard to keep the anger out of his. “Unnecessarily so, if I might say so. Perhaps you’re not aware of this but I have visited Mr. Westerley.” I raised an eyebrow in surprise and he nodded, sensing my scepticism. “It’s quite true, I assure you,” he continued. “Soon after he was brought back to the Hall. And on one or two occasions since then. The poor man is in such a terrible state that it’s upsetting to see him at all. But perhaps you’ve seen him too?”

“I have,” I admitted.

“Then isn’t it possible, Miss Caine, that laying eyes on such an unfortunate specimen of humanity, and knowing the story of how he ended up in that position, has played with your imagination somewhat?”

“I don’t believe so,” I replied, unwilling to be patronized. “After all, if you see him as regularly as you say, and I have only laid eyes on him once, then why would I suffer these unhappy delusions when you do not?”

“Miss Caine, is it necessary for me to say?”

“It is.”

He sighed. “I fear you will rebuke me for this, but is it not true to say that your sensibilities, as a woman—”

“Stop, please!” I insisted, raising my voice so that it echoed around the aisles. I closed my eyes for a moment, telling myself to control my temper, not to allow him to aggravate me so badly. “Do not say that I am more susceptible because of my sex.”

“Then I will not say it,” replied Reverend Deacons. “But you might find more answers in that suggestion than you like.”

I wondered whether I should simply stand up and leave. What had brought me there anyway? It was a nonsense, all of it. This building, that altar, this ridiculous man with his vestments and sanctimonious airs. The living the parish afforded him while others starved. More fool me for thinking that he might ever offer me some solace. I gathered myself together, preparing to make a dignified departure, when a further thought occurred to me.

“I have a question,” I said. “Not to do with the events at Gaudlin Hall. Perhaps you can provide me with an answer?”

“I can try.”

“You believe in an afterlife, Father?” I asked him. “In the rewards of heaven and the damnation of hell?”

“Of course,” he replied without hesitation, looking shocked that I would even dare to question his creed.

“You believe in these things without any proof whatsoever of the existence of either?”

“My dear girl, that is where faith comes in.”

“Of course,” I said. “But if you believe in these two forms of the afterlife, then why are you so opposed to considering a third?”

He frowned. “What do you mean by a third?” he asked. “What third exactly?”

“A third place,” I explained. “A place where the souls of the dead can linger before being admitted to heaven or condemned to hell.”

“You refer to purgatory, Miss Caine.”

“A fourth place then,” I said, almost laughing at the absurdity of the vast number of places where a soul could be located. “You believe in three but not four. A place where souls remain part of this world, still observing us and at times interacting with us. Hurting us or protecting us. Why should such a plane of existence seem so ridiculous to you when the others—heaven, hell and purgatory—do not?”

“Because there is no mention of such a place in the Bible,” he said patiently, speaking to me as if I was a child, which caused me to throw my hands in the air in frustration.

“The Bible is written by men,” I declared. “It has gone through so many changes, so many linguistic translations over the centuries that it adapts and re-creates itself in the form of the time in which the reader engages with it. Only a fool believes that the words of the Bible are the words delivered by Christ.”

“Miss Caine, you are approaching blasphemy,” he said, sitting back in the pew now and looking scandalized. I could see his hand trembling slightly as he spoke. I suspected that he was unaccustomed to being challenged so provocatively by anyone, let alone by a woman. His position, like so many of his ilk, was one of uncontested and unearned respect. “And if you continue to speak in this vein, I will not listen.”

“I apologize,” I said, not wishing to infuriate him or bring the roof of the church down on my head; there was enough possibility of that at Gaudlin Hall without it happening here too. “I don’t mean to upset you. Truly I don’t. But you must admit that there is so much that we don’t know about the universe that it is entirely possible, indeed it is likely, it is
more
than likely, that there are mysteries whose revelation would surprise us. Shock
us, even. Cause us to doubt the very foundations upon which we base our faith in this world.”

He considered this, removed his spectacles and wiped them with his handkerchief before replacing them on his nose. “I am not a highly educated man, Miss Caine,” he said after a lengthy pause. “I am a simple vicar. I have no aspirations towards a bishopric, nor do I expect that one would ever be offered to me. I seek no other earthly position than being a pastor to my flock. I read, of course. I have an enquiring mind. And I admit that over the course of my life, there have been times when I have had … questions about the nature and meaning of existence. I would not be human if I did not. The nature of spiritual belief is one of the eternal questions about the universe. But I reject your hypothesis on the grounds that it removes God from the equation. God chooses when we should enter this world and when we should leave it. He does not make half-decisions and leave souls lingering in crisis. He is decisive. He is no Hamlet, if you wish to speak in Shakespearean terms. Those would be the actions of a cruel and merciless Lord, not the loving one we read of in the Bible.”

“You don’t think God can be cruel and merciless?” I asked, trying not to laugh and provoke him even further. “Is your reading of the Bible so superficial that you do not recognize barbarity on every page?”

“Miss Caine!”

“Think not that I am unfamiliar with the testaments, Reverend. And it seems to me that the God of whom you speak has a great gift for brutality and malice. He is something of a specialist in the subject.”

“You are disrespectful, madam. The God that I know would never treat one of his children in such a vindictive manner.
Leaving a soul to languish as you suggest—never! Not in this world!”

“But out of it?”

“No!”

“You know this for sure? He has told you?”

“Miss Caine, you must stop this. Think of where you are.”

“I am in a building created of bricks and mortar. Put together by men.”

“I cannot hear any more,” he shouted, losing his temper with me at last. (Had I waited for this moment? Did I
want
to provoke a human, and not a spiritual, response in this impotent man?) “You will leave this place if you cannot speak with the respect that—”

I jumped up from the pew, staring down at him in frustration. “You are not there, Father,” I cried. “I wake up at Gaudlin Hall, I spend most of my day there, I sleep there at night. And throughout it all there is but one thought running through my mind.”

“And that is?”

“This house is haunted.”

He groaned loudly in protest and looked away, his face a study of pain and anger. “I will not hear these words,” he said.

“Of course you won’t,” I replied, walking away from him. “Because your mind is closed. As are the minds of all your type.”

I marched down the aisle of the church, my shoes ringing on the tiles beneath my feet, and emerged into the daylight of a cold winter’s morning, a great urge overwhelming me to scream aloud. Before me, I could make out the tradespeople of the village going about their business as if there was nothing amiss in the world. There was Molly Sutcliffe, emptying a bucket of soapy water into the road outside the tea shop. There was Alex
Toxley, making his way into his surgery. Over there, I could glimpse the shadow of Mr. Cratchett, sitting in the window of the solicitor’s office, his great ledgers open before him, his eyes fixed on the pages as his pen scuttled across them, making its markings. There was Mr. Raisin’s horse and carriage outside—so he was inside, at his desk—and a thought occurred to me. One question that needed an answer.

“Oh, Miss Caine,” said Mr. Cratchett, looking up with a resigned expression on his face. “You are back to see us again. What joy. I wonder that I don’t set up a special desk with your name on it.”

“I know this is an inconvenience, Mr. Cratchett,” I said. “And I don’t want to take up any more of Mr. Raisin’s valuable time. He has been more than generous to me already. But I have one question, just one, that I need to ask him. Would you speak to him and ask him whether he might have a moment to indulge me in this? I promise I will stay for no more than a minute or two.”

Sensing that I might be as good as my word and that he might be rid of me all the quicker if he acquiesced, the clerk sighed, laid down his quill and repaired to the back office, returning a moment later, nodding wearily.

“Two minutes,” he said, pointing at me and I nodded and strode past him. Inside the office, Mr. Raisin was seated behind his desk and, as he made a movement to rise, I ushered him down again and told him that he should stay where he was.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “Since we spoke the other day, you have been much on my mind. I—”

“I won’t delay you,” I said, interrupting him. “I know you’re busy. I have just one question. If I was to leave, that is if we were to leave, together I mean, would the estate have any objections?”

He raised an eyebrow and stared at me. His mouth opened and closed several times in surprise. “If
we
were to leave, Miss Caine?” he asked. “You and I?”

“No, not you and I,” I replied, almost bursting out laughing at the misunderstanding. “The children and I. If I were to take them back to London to live with me there. Or the continent. I have often felt a desire to live abroad. Would the estate approve of that? Would it support us? Or would we be pursued by constables and brought back to Gaudlin? Would I be detained for kidnap?”

He thought about it for a moment and shook his head. “It’s out of the question,” he said. “There are clear provisions in the estate that say that as long as Mr. Westerley is present at Gaudlin Hall, then the children may not leave for a protracted period of time. Even if they were in the care of a guardian such as yourself.”

My mind raced ahead of me and I began to think in the most ludicrous terms. “And what if he left too?” I asked. “What if I took him with me?”