Tower of Silence (29 page)

…
the barely understood secret became woven into childhood nightmares and childhood fears
…her notes had said.
And in the end, it called the poor mangled ghosts out of their uneasy resting places…At times, the pretence spilled over into ordinary life
…

A child, stumbling on a barely understood secret. Something shameful, something criminal, even? Something in Joanna’s own childhood that she had kept a secret, even from Krzystof himself? Something she was intending to draw on for a new book? She always said you drew on snippets of experiences, just as you drew on snippets of people’s personalities. Vampire-stuff again, she had said, grinning.

As he drove back down the road leading to Inchcape, his mind was still gnawing away at those scraps of plot, and the feeling that he was missing something was still strongly with him. Come
on
, said his mind angrily. If ever you possessed that semi-apocryphal Hungarian sixth sense, this is the time to be using it!

It was getting dark, which meant he must have spent longer than he had intended in Stornforth. He glanced at the dashboard clock, but it was only just on four, so the gathering darkness must be another of the wild thunderstorms in which this part of Scotland seemed to specialise. It was odd and rather disturbing the way that a storm could change the entire landscape. Everywhere became slowly soaked in brooding violet light, and there was a
feeling of immense and powerful menace that you could not quite pin down, so that you found yourself remembering all those old doomsday prophecies. You found yourself wondering about ancient buried secrets that might lie at the heart of your wife’s disappearance—

Rot, said Krzystof’s mind crossly. Yes, but if the fabled twilight of the gods ever did descend on the world it would very likely start with this sick, depressing gloaming, although if Joanna was dead Krzystof did not care if mankind was facing the final apocalypse of all the religions of the world rolled into one.

Halfway home the rain began, lashing down from the heavens and hurling itself against the windscreen so fiercely that the wipers could barely keep up with it. The road was already awash, and with the thickening light all around it Krzystof felt as if he was driving along the bottom of a murky green ocean. Once he thought he had missed the turning, but then he caught sight of the ancient tower stark and black against the storm clouds, and knew he had not. He drove on through the storm, relieved to think he was nearing Teind House.

Whatever its history might be, it made a good landmark, the Round Tower.

Moy’s huge bell was still sounding as Emily and Selina crossed the gardens. Emily thought it was a terrible thing to hear, a huge muffled booming sound that made you think of all those massive tons of solid iron and bronze, clanging to and fro within the depths of the belfry. Beware! the iron tongue was saying. There’s a murderer on the prowl! Beware the murderer!

As they went towards the small orchard behind the house, Emily wondered what Patrick would be doing. Would he be dashing to and fro at Moy, organising search parties and things? Everyone would jump to his command, of course, because they always did. Emily would have jumped to it as well if she had had the chance. No, she was not going to think like that. She would not jump to anyone’s command. She was a free spirit and a staunch feminist, and if she cried into her
pillow for the next five years over Patrick it was nobody’s affair but her own.

She glanced a bit uneasily at Selina March who could never have cried into her pillow for a man, or wanted to be made love to, shamelessly and rapturously in front of a fire, in the way Emily had wanted to make love with Patrick.

‘Miss March–where are we going?’

The words came out a bit more abruptly than Emily had intended, but Selina looked round in surprise. As if it ought to have been obvious, she said, ‘To the tower, of course. I’ve already told you that. The tower’s the one place they might not look for us. It’s where I hid last time, and they didn’t find me. They won’t find me again. So we’ll be quite all right. We’ve gone back, you see–surely you know that by now. We’ve been given a second chance, and this time we’re all going to escape. You don’t need to be afraid.’

Emily was uneasy, but she was not really very much afraid, because it was impossible to equate Miss March–prim, twittery little Selina–with anything violent or harmful. But as they walked through the already darkening afternoon, a little voice in her mind whispered, But supposing Selina
was
the child who hid with Christy in the bone-pit? Well, so what if she was? It doesn’t make her an outcast. No, but it might have made her mad, said the voice, warningly. Oh, shut up.

Whoever Selina was, or was not, it would clearly be kinder to fall in with what she wanted, and if she really had been there on that horrific night Christy had described, it
was small wonder that she had spent the rest of her life sheltering in the boring, peaceful safety of Inchcape.

She was still clutching Emily’s wrist and her fingers were unexpectedly and rather worryingly strong. As an errant spear of lightning flickered somewhere over to the east, heralding one of Inchcape’s fierce storms, Emily saw that Selina’s eyes were too wide open, and that there was a rather horrid stary look to them.

But I’d better go along with her, thought Emily. It won’t be very nice, hiding out in the tower, but I don’t suppose it’ll be for very long. Most likely it’ll just be a question of staying there until the bell stops tolling and she comes out of her panic, poor old Selina. She wished she had not lit on the word
toll
, which was a bit too reminiscent of all those snippets of poetry you picked up about death knells. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, because it tolls for thee…That had been John Donne, hadn’t it? writing about the universality of death. There was some gorgeous sexily romantic passion among his work. People did not quote poetry much these days; in Emily’s experience they just wanted to get you into bed, and afterwards they were more inclined to send out for a pizza than to quote beautiful poetry to you. Patrick might quote poetry in bed though—Except that she had stopped thinking about Patrick in any guise whatsoever, and most of all she had stopped thinking about being in bed with him.

As they went through Teind House’s little orchard she could feel the thrumming vibrations of the great bell disturbing the air and making the trees shiver, and it
brought back the mad, confused fantasies that Christabel Maskelyne had poured out the day before. There are ogres in the world, Christy had said, her poor, cracked mind no longer able to distinguish dark fairy tale from reality; her perceptions clouded and distorted by the memories.

Ogres. Ever since that appalling experience in India Christy had seen ogres everywhere–she had believed they hid behind masks of human flesh and human bone and skin, and she had been continually on the watch for them. Ogres, thought Emily, feeling round the word. Giants, who might come pounding across the landscape when you least expected it, shaking the earth with their huge, fee-fi-fo-fum tread, slyly timing their movements to coincide with the booming clamour of a tolling bell so that you would not hear their approach; all you would feel would be the shuddering of the bell’s brazen clanging…

The thought: I hope Christy can’t hear Moy’s bell from her room! formed in Emily’s mind, and then she remembered that it might be Christy who had escaped anyway.

They had reached the edge of Teind’s gardens, and Selina was drawing her through a small gate at the bottom of the orchard. When Emily had gone out to the tower last time she had not come this way, she had used the uneven road that branched off the highway. She had not known about this gate: it was so overgrown on both sides by bramble hedge that if you did not know it was there you would have walked past it. The storm was gathering
momentum, and there was the feeling of pressure from overhead, as if the sick twilight was pouring downwards, smothering the puny humans who walked their little world…Oh, don’t be so ridiculous!

And then there ahead of them, rearing up against the lowering skies, with the scudding storm clouds as its backdrop, was the tower, and no matter how confidently Emily had thought she had banished her own private ghosts by going inside the place that day, approaching it now, with the sound of Moy’s bell shivering on the air and a storm blowing in from the east, it was still the windowless tower of the nightmares.

As they crossed the uneven ground, Miss March’s hand still looped tightly around Emily’s wrist, Emily said, as calmly as she could manage, ‘You know, I think we could go back to the house now. I think they’ve stopped sounding the bell, don’t you? Let’s go back and I’ll make a cup of tea.’

But even as Emily was speaking Selina was pulling her forward, and as they moved into the shadow of the tower she gave a mad ladylike little chuckle that was the most horrid thing yet.

‘Oh, we can’t stop,’ she said. ‘We must hide. If we don’t, they’ll drag us out and shoot us. I watched it all, you see. I saw them all shot. Douglas and the little ones–and Christy. Dear brave Christy, she was the best of them all, you know. I thought she got away–I thought she hid with me in the tower–I heard her speaking and I felt her hold my hand. But she was dead by then, so after all it was a ghost.’

The lowering skies splintered into shards that spun crazily around Emily’s head. She thought: so I
was
right! She really is the child who escaped–the one who called the birds ogre-birds. Selina March and Christabel Maskelyne were together in that place–that place in India whose name I can’t remember—It all fits and what’s happening now fits as well. They hid in that tower with the bodies and the vultures, and now Selina’s going to hide in this tower where the birds from the Stornforth sanctuary sometimes come. She’s confusing the two places; she’s gone back–she said something about being given a second chance to escape. Oh,
poor
Miss March, thought Emily in dreadful compassion, and as the storm closed down in earnest she allowed herself to be taken forward towards the tower’s small door.

Emily flinched as the first major crackle of lightning sizzled across the skies, and then thought that if you had to be entering nightmare places you might as well do so with the full complement of sound effects and atmospheric lighting. I won’t mind about any of it, she thought determinedly. I certainly won’t mind about the thunder, and now that I understand what’s behind Miss March’s peculiarness, I won’t mind that either. I’ll be perfectly able to cope and I needn’t even be frightened.

It was not until Selina opened the door and pushed Emily inside the tower, stepping in after her and slamming the door shut, that Emily finally saw that the Selina March she had known–the Selina March that probably everyone in Inchcape had known–was no longer there. It was as if her face was dissolving and bits were peeling
off and falling onto the ground, so that you kept getting brief, horrifying glimpses of the real person beneath.

It was exactly as poor, crazed Christabel Maskelyne had said: there were people in the world who could put on disguises–not velvet or fabric or paper disguises, but ones made out of human flesh and skin and eyes and lips. And they were
good
, Christy had said. The disguises were so good you would never know the truth. Until the mask fell away…

Selina March was not one of poor Christy’s ogres in disguise, but she had been wearing a mask, Emily could see that now. She could see that under the persona of an old-fashioned spinsterish lady, Selina March was in fact very, very insane and very, very dangerous.

It was at this point that Emily finally admitted that she was very frightened indeed.

Teind House, when Krzystof finally reached it, was shrouded in darkness. Miss March was probably sheltering from the storm with her friend, Miss Laughlin, because only a fool or a maniac would have driven through that downpour, and Krzystof was thankful to remember the key she had given him at lunch which was clipped onto his keyring. He drove the car as near to the house as he could, skewing it so that the headlights fell on the front door. It was only a few steps away, but by the time he reached it his hair was plastered to his head, and his jacket was drenched. He unlocked the door and looked inside. The cold stormlight cast grey moving shadows across the oak floor of the hall, and Krzystof called out,
‘Miss March? Are you here? It’s me–I’m just parking the car.’

Nothing. Silence. And the house had the feel that empty houses did have. Krzystof felt for the light switch, and reassuring yellow light flooded the hall. At least the storm had not killed the electricity yet. He ran back to the car to switch off the headlights, and then thought he had better park it more tidily so that if Lorna Laughlin drove up with Selina later on she would have room to manoeuvre. This time when he ran back to the house his shoes made squelching noises on the gravel. Krzystof swore and stepped inside, closing the door against the driving rain.

The storm was crashing overhead and the lights were already flickering ominously. Krzystof glanced uneasily up at the ceiling, wondering where the storm lanterns would be. It might be a good idea to have one to hand, along with a box of matches. He would have a look in the kitchen in a minute. He dragged off his sodden jacket and hung it on the hatstand. He might as well step out of his shoes as well; there was no need to leave wet, gravelly marks all over Selina March’s polished floors. He could scoot upstairs in stockinged feet, and dry his hair in the bathroom.

He bent down to take off his shoes, and it was then, his sightline nearer to floor level, that he saw something that sent a little scud of nervous fear across his skin. He straightened up slowly, his eyes on the old-fashioned black-and-white tiles. The electric light was still flickering, but it was more than enough to show the wet
footprints crossing the hall. Krzystof stared at them. Footprints–
wet
footprints left by someone who must have come in from the storm a very short time ago. Someone who had gone across the hall and had not bothered about marking the nicely polished floor.

Miss March? It must be. But the house had been in darkness when he arrived, and there was no indication that she had returned from Stornforth. And be logical, said Krzystof’s mind: would Selina, who polishes everything to within an inch of its life, really have walked across that floor in wet shoes?

He remembered she had taken an umbrella, and turned to check the umbrella stand. Red because a red umbrella was cheerful in the rain, she had said, and Krzystof had reached into the stand for the red umbrella and handed it to her himself. It was not there now. It was not propped against the outside of the door to dry, either. Don’t be absurd, said his mind. She’s not here. You know she’s not here. Then who is it who came in here and walked across that floor? His heart began to beat more rapidly, but he went to the foot of the stairs and called out again. ‘Miss March? It’s me–I’m back from the storm. Are you up there?’

Still that same silence. Or was it the same? Had the atmosphere of Teind House suddenly shifted, so that there was no longer the feeling of an empty house? Wasn’t there now the indefinable, unmistakable feeling of someone listening? He looked back at the footprints, and remembered that he had left the front door unlocked and partly open while he went back to the car. Had there
been enough time for someone to get inside and hide? Oh God, yes, more than enough.

He’s in the house, thought Krzystof. I can feel that he is. He’s lying in wait for me somewhere. Oh, don’t be ridiculous, that’s the urban legend of an intruder luring the unsuspecting householder outside, and then sneaking into the house to hide. I’m not falling for that hoary old one! he thought crossly. But Hungarian extra sense or not, he knew that there
was
someone inside Teind House, and he knew it was not Selina March.

Just then, with their unnerving habit of dramatic timing, Teind House’s lights went out, plunging the hall into pitch darkness.

It took Krzystof longer than he had thought to grope his way to the kitchen, and rummage in cupboards for the storm lamps, or, at the very least, a torch.

The storm was reaching its zenith and as far as Krzystof could make out it had decided to do so directly above Teind House’s chimneys. He winced as lightning sizzled blindingly across the dark skies beyond the windows, thunder exploding at the same time by way of accompaniment. Donner and Blitzen again, whooping it up over northern Scotland.

The lamps were neatly stored in a cupboard, with several boxes of matches next to them. It took a few minutes to get one lit, but Krzystof was used to field trips where lighting could be even more primitive than this, and he managed fairly well. He went back into the hall,
carrying the lamp carefully, and looked about him, trying to decide what to do next. Nothing moved. The few bits of furniture stood exactly where they always stood: the carved dower chest was on the right of the door, and the narrow hall table that its maker had intended to hold an elegant salver for visiting cards, or a genteel arrangement of flowers, was next to the chest. Great-uncle Matthew’s clock was ticking away, and the hatstand was still partly covered by Krzystof’s rain-drenched jacket–a dark tumble of blackness. Krzystof glanced at it, and tried not to imagine that it might suddenly twist itself into a threatening bogeyman shape…