On the Bare (5 page)

Simon examined the archway, looking for loose boards, while I tried to find another way in. Playing my torch along the exterior, I saw a pair of sash windows set low in the wall, presumably leading into a drawing room or a library. They weren’t barricaded as thoroughly as the door and would be easier to get into. I chose a window and set to work on the boards with a hammer, trying to balance the torch under my arm.

Simon grabbed at the hammer. ‘Here, let me do that.’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ I said impatiently, digging the claws under one of the boards and prying it up. ‘Just hold the torch for me.’

The nails pulled free with a squeal and we froze, looking around warily. I waited a few seconds and then went to work on the other side of the plank. Simon flinched as the wood splintered noisily.

‘Someone’s going to hear us,’ he hissed.

‘Will you stop worrying? Don’t be such an old lady.’

In truth, I was just as nervous, but Simon was so on edge I was afraid he would jeopardise the whole operation. His hands could barely even hold the torch still.

The window lifted easily, its catch rusted through. That was a relief, as I didn’t fancy having to break it and crawl across broken glass to get in. Feeling like a proper tomb raider, I began prying up another board to widen the opening. I freed one side, but I couldn’t wedge the hammer under the other half. Gritting my teeth with the effort, I slid my hands underneath the board it to pull it away from the window, ignoring the muffled protests behind me.

‘Kate, I really think –’

‘Oww, fuck!’ I glared at the blood streaked across the back of my left hand. Simon shone his torch at the window. A contorted nail jutted from the edge of the window frame, my blood glistening on its rusty point. It had carved a vicious furrow along the length of my hand and just beyond the wrist.

‘This is crazy,’ he said. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed.’

Wincing with pain, I wiped my hand on my jeans and picked up the hammer again. I felt a touch of pride at the thought that I’d have a scar to show for my adventure.

‘That needs a tetanus shot, Kate.’

‘I’m not leaving here until I get what I came for.’

He shook his head with frustrated defeat. ‘Why do you always have to be so bloody-minded?’

Simon had been against the whole idea from the start and I had to work fast now to get inside before he changed his mind and left me there. I’d needed him to ‘borrow’ the punt from the Cherwell Boathouse and I needed him to get me back when I was done. The Cher was notoriously muddy upstream from the Boathouse and I was afraid I’d lose the pole if I tried it alone.

Reluctantly, Simon helped me remove the second board and I dusted my hands. ‘Good enough. I can fit through that.’

He looked fretfully out across the garden and then back at the window. He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

‘It’s not the British Museum, for God’s sake. We won’t get arrested.’

‘It’s not that, it’s just …’

‘What?’

He looked away and suddenly I understood why he’d been so jumpy all along. ‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts!’

He shot me a sullen look.

I’d never believed any of the stories about Scargrieve. The sightings. The noises.

Well, I wasn’t looking for ghosts. I was after something far more substantial. Something I’d only read about, but which I was certain existed and was still there in the boarded-up house.

‘It’s a little creepy,’ I admitted, ‘and Health and Safety wouldn’t approve of us going in there. But come on – it’s not haunted.’

He still looked unconvinced.

‘Look, you don’t even have to go in. Just stay here and stand guard. Make sure no one steals the punt.’

He shifted his feet nervously before finally muttering something about my stubbornness. I kissed his cheek and clambered through the window.

Late in the nineteenth century, an eccentric gentleman named Henry Spencer Ashbee had compiled a three-volume bibliography of all the pornographic literature of the time. With tongue-in-cheek scholarship he called his works the
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
, the
Centuria Librorum Absconditorum
and the
Catena Librorum Tacendorum
and published them under the name of Pisanus Fraxi – an anagram of his other pseudonyms Fraxinus and Apis, the Ash and the bee. Ashbee was a compulsive collector, with interests ranging from erotic ephemera to Cervantes. He was also commonly believed to be ‘Walter’, the author of the infamous 11-volume sexual memoir,
My Secret Life
.

Ashbee’s circle included many Victorian luminaries, including the explorer Richard Burton, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne and the politician Richard Monckton Milnes. But of his many correspondents, William Henry Fox interested me the most. Under the pseudonym Verity, Fox submitted phony letters to the newspapers extolling the virtues of strict governesses and convent schools where corporal punishment was de rigueur. This was a popular game amongst Ashbee’s circle of flagellant friends, all well-known rebels against the stifling Victorian social mores.

I was certain Fox was also the author of the anonymous classic
Curiosities of Flagellation
. Like ‘Walter’, Fox had a penchant for servants and other working-class girls and he chronicled his exploits with obsessive glee. A true ‘lover of the rod’, he described in copious detail the birchings he administered to his maids at the slightest provocation. I’d referenced it heavily in my thesis,
The Wages of Sin: Prostitution and Perversity in Victorian England
.

Fox lived in North Oxford, in the house known as Scargrieve, which had been built by his father Samuel with money from his steel-framed umbrella business. Fox never married and he left Scargrieve to a cousin, who in turn bequeathed it to his only daughter, Maria Radcliffe. After her sweetheart was killed in the Great War, Maria remained a spinster and lived out the rest of her days in the house. It had lain empty ever since.

The urban legends sprang up immediately: Maria’s restless spirit roamed the halls at night, calling her lover to return from battle. Fox himself prowled the empty house, cursing those who disturbed his rest. There were reports of noises in the night and muffled cries of pain – the stuff of ghost stories since time began.

My work on Fox’s biography had unearthed a previously unknown package of letters between Fox and Ashbee. As I pored over the letters I became fascinated by their relationship. On more than one occasion they had shared a prostitute and compared notes afterwards on her performance. And while there was a bragging locker-room
tone
to their discussions, there was also something oddly scholarly about it. I read the two men’s correspondence with amusement, wondering what their female companions would have made of their meticulous accounts.

One day I came across a cryptic reference in one of Ashbee’s letters to ‘the fourth index’. He was wondering what to call it. Ashbee’s life had been well chronicled by historians and writers like Steven Marcus and Ian Gibson. So where was this fourth index and why had no one ever mentioned it?

‘Your
Codex
is quite safe,’ Fox wrote some months later, adding the peculiar detail, ‘Nell’s drawers keep it warm.’

A subsequent letter from Ashbee – actually the last before he died – made no mention of this at all. I was left scratching my head. Then something clicked. I hurriedly paged back through Fox’s book to a half-remembered episode with a parlour maid, Nell, whom he had caught with one of the footmen. After birching the girl, he’d taken her to bed. Then he’d sent her away, keeping her drawers as a souvenir. Nell was too flustered to ask for them back.

I recalled a letter to Ashbee where Fox had described ‘checking’ her the next day, ostensibly to see how she was healing. The sight of her welted bottom had inflamed his passion and he’d given her ‘a good frigging’ by his desk with a finger. He’d then told her that she should go bare from then on in case she needed to be disciplined again. To Ashbee he added the prurient detail that he kept her ‘unmentionables’ in his desk – in a secret compartment.

My heart was racing. As far as I knew, none of the furniture in Scargrieve had been touched since Maria Radcliffe’s death in 1999. Distant relatives were still squabbling in court to be recognised as her heir. If Ashbee had in fact written a fourth index and entrusted it to his friend, it was probably still there. And I was the only one who knew it.

I found myself in a library filled with the musty reek of damp and rotting books. A threadbare Persian rug covered
the
floor and every surface was coated with dust. Cobwebs swayed above me as I swung my torch upwards to reveal the cornice.

I found the desk at once, squatting beside a large window on the side wall. Broken glass littered the floor beneath the window and threads of moonlight filtered in through gaps in the boards.

It was a simple roll-top desk, with its key in the latch. I rolled it open, releasing a cloud of dust that made me cough. Was it really going to be this easy? Hardly worthy of Lara Croft, but I was still excited at the adventure.

I sifted through the papers on the surface of the desk. All modern, mundane stuff relating to Maria Radcliffe. I searched the drawers, feeling for hidden compartments. Nothing. I groped underneath it and along the underside of the roll-top. Still nothing. Secret compartments weren’t rare. Nor were they especially difficult to find if you knew one was there. But there was nothing. Crestfallen, I finally had to admit that I’d drawn a blank.

‘Damn!’ I thumped the desk hard with my fist.

I heard movement outside and then Simon’s worried voice. ‘Kate? You OK?’

His torch beam found me through the window and I blinked, shielding my eyes from the glare.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. It’s not here.’

He couldn’t keep the relief out of his voice. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. Well, come on, let’s get out of here before –’

‘It must be somewhere else in the house,’ I mused aloud. ‘He wouldn’t keep something like that in the library.’

My eyes wandered to the door as I tried to imagine the house as it had been in the late 1800s. Where would a Victorian gentleman keep something personal and private?

‘I’m going upstairs,’ I said suddenly, heading for the door.

Behind me I heard Simon’s nerves unravelling as he called after me as loudly as he dared, both furious and frightened.

The door led me into a large oak-panelled entrance hall flanked by austere mediaeval-style carved chairs and an
ecclesiastical
settle. I couldn’t believe the house hadn’t been looted of its antiques. The damp would claim them soon if someone didn’t rescue them.

The floor tiles were laid in the elaborate geometric pattern typical of the period. They had probably been lovely in their day, but now they were cracked and caked with grime. The front door stood opposite me – a vast gothic behemoth beneath a pseudo-Tudor arch. Above me a frayed wire dangled from the decaying ceiling rose where a chandelier had once hung.

A scuttling sound made me jump and I whirled to see the retreating tail of a rat scurrying into a corner. I shuddered and pulled my coat a little tighter, feeling suddenly vulnerable. My feeble torch beam was no match for the great hall and I felt the darkness pressing in on me. Unnerved, I took a few cautious steps further in, listening intently. All I heard was my own pounding heart.

I sensed a looming shape to my left and my torch revealed a curving staircase with gilded wrought-iron balusters. I didn’t like the idea of going up there, but if I left the house now there would be no coming back. Simon certainly wouldn’t help me again. I reminded myself how important this discovery was. I would keep my find secret until I’d written a book about it. By then no one would care how I’d got hold of the manuscript.

Many of the brass stair rods were missing and the runner was damp and spongy underfoot. I made a face at the squishing sounds as I went up, keeping to the centre so as not to brush against the hanging strips of mildewed wallpaper. On the landing was an imposing stained-glass window. Several panes had been broken in the process of boarding it up.

Shards of glass crunched underfoot as I headed up the second flight of the stairs. A parade of dusty and neglected portraits marched along the wall to the top. Frock-coated gentlemen and dour ladies sat in their frames in starchy Victorian disapproval. I half expected their cold eyes to follow me as I continued up the stairs, but the paintings were as dead as their subjects.

To my delight, I found Fox himself near the top. He was quite striking. His eyes seemed more alive than those of his neighbours as he scrutinised me from the confines of his tarnished frame, sizing me up. His black morning suit emphasised his jet-black hair and beard. His imposing demeanour and obvious refinement put me in mind of Professor Moriarty. Given his predilections, I wasn’t surprised he had an air of the sinister about him.

A hallway branched from the top of the stairs. I followed my instincts and took the right turning, arriving at a panelled door. I turned the handle slowly and it swung open without even a creak, admitting me to what was clearly the master bedroom.

My torch beam unveiled a black iron bedstead with so many cobwebs woven through the swirls of ironwork that it looked as though they were holding the bed together. The rest of the furniture was just as stark and masculine. There was a hulking wardrobe against the far wall with a small dressing-table and a simple chair beside it. But there was no desk.

A sudden heavy thud made me gasp and I quickly switched the torch off. I tried to calm my breathing as I strained to discern the source of the noise. Another rat? I didn’t like to imagine the size it would have to be to make a sound like that. Then I heard the unmistakable noise of a door banging shut downstairs. Panting with real fear, I edged towards the wall, suddenly feeling exposed in the centre of the room.

Cold sweat plastered my clothing to me and I waited for what seemed like an hour in the dark silence before the realisation set in. Simon. I switched the torch back on, angrier with myself for getting spooked than with him for scaring me.