The Body at Auercliff (28 page)

Part Nine

Rebecca - Today

Chapter Fifty-
Three

Sitting up suddenly with a jerk, I realize I must have briefly dozed off. I'm in the front-seat of my car, with the lights off, and when I look out through the windshield I see the huge dark shape of Auercliff towering above me.

Checking my phone, I see that it's 1:15am, which means I must have napped for about twenty minutes.

“Great,” I mutter, grabbing a bottle of water and taking a drink. I can already feel myself starting to nod off again, so once I've finished with the water I open the car door and step out into the cool night air.

At least if I'm on my feet, I can't fall asleep. I need to stay awake, so I can check to make sure that my aunt doesn't start wandering about at night.

I have to admit, the forest around Auercliff is a little creepy at the best of times. Right now it seems positively menacing, and moonlight doesn't make things any better. After a moment I realize that I've been deliberately avoiding looking directly toward the mausoleum, so I force myself to turn. Sure enough, I can just about make out those creepy white stone walls a couple of hundred meters away, and I feel a shudder pass through my chest as I remember that awful afternoon many years ago when I ended up trapped inside.

Of course, I still don't remember everything that happened. I woke up in the hospital, having suffered a pretty serious concussion, and the memories were gone. I know I was trapped in the dark, and I know I panicked, but apart from that all the memories seem just out of reach.

Maybe I should go closer and take another look, just to prove to myself that I'm no longer the same scared little girl. The idea unsettles me, and I can't deny a feeling of tense anticipation, but I guess that's all the more reason why I
should
go over and face the mausoleum again. After all, the only thing to fear is -

Suddenly I turn and look toward the house as I realize I can hear a voice crying out. I freeze for a moment, looking at the dark windows, but there's
definitely
someone shouting somewhere inside Auercliff.

“Aunt Emily?” I whisper, hurrying around the car and making my way toward the front door.

“Get away from me!” she's shouting, her voice sounding so old and frail. “What do you want? Why can't you just leave me alone?”

“Aunt Emily!” I call out, making my way up the steps and opening the front door. “Aunt Emily, are you -”

I stop in the hallway as I hear a loud crashing sound coming from upstairs, followed by a series of bumps.

Figuring that something must be terribly wrong, I race up the stairs and then along the corridor, and now I can hear my aunt calling out again, as if there's someone tormenting her in one of the rooms. Reaching her bedroom door, I push it open and hurry inside, only to find that there's no sign of her at all.

“I don't know what you want!” she shouts suddenly, from somewhere else in the house. “I'm an old woman! I'm begging you, have some pity and leave me alone!”

“Aunt Emily!” I yell, racing along the corridor until I find that the door at the far end has been left wide open.

Making my way through into the colder, abandoned part of the house, I realize I can hear someone shuffling about up ahead, and a moment later I hurry around another corner and see my frail, elderly aunt crawling along the floor. Her whole body is trembling, and she's wearing only her thin night-dress as she tries to drag herself back this way.

“Aunt Emily!” I shout, hurrying over and kneeling next to her. “What the hell are you doing?”

She grabs my arms and looks up at me with pure fear in her eyes, and it seems to take a moment before she recognizes me.

“What are you doing here?” she stammers, before turning and looking along the empty corridor. “I told you not to stay here at night. I expressly made you -”

“And why did you do that?” I ask, interrupting her. “Aunt Emily, who were you talking to just now? What's going on?”

“You have to get out of here,” she continues, turning back to me and trying in vain to push me away. “Go to the village. Better yet, go home. But whatever you do and wherever you go, you absolutely mustn't be here at night!”

“Why not?”

“Because -”

Before she can finish, there's another loud bump from one of the rooms up ahead, followed by what seems like footsteps pacing quickly across the floorboards.

“Who's that?” I ask, my heart racing as I realize that I came running into this situation without any means to defend myself. I guess it never occurred to me that I'd come across anything more than my aunt's fevered imagination. “Aunt Emily, is it a burglar?”

“It's the same every night,” she sobs, gripping my arms tighter and tighter. “Please, Esmerelda, you just have to get out of here!”

“Esmerelda? Who's -”

I flinch as I hear another bump from one of the rooms.

“Are there other people living here?” I ask, as I try to make sense of the madness. “Is that what's happening? Do you have other people here, and one of them died and that's the body I found? Aunt Emily, please, you have to tell me the truth!”

“What are you talking about?” she stammers. “What body?”

“I'm going to get you out of here,” I tell her. “You're freezing, I have to get you into the other part of the house, and then you can tell me everything. Do you think you can walk?”

“Leave me here,” she sobs. “I deserve this. I deserve everything it does to me.”

I try to haul her up, but she pushes me away. When I try again, I find that she's already slumping down against the floor, and she seems to be muttering something under her breath. My only option is to carry her back through to the other side of the house, but after a moment I hear another bump from the far end of the corridor. Looking toward one of the doors, I realize that there definitely seems to be someone else here in the house with us. Whoever it is, they must have heard me, but for some reason they're not coming out of the room.

My heart is pounding, but I have to see.

“Wait here,” I tell Emily. “I'll be right back.”

“You must leave,” she gasps, as I step around her and make my way along the corridor. “Please don't make it angry. Don't you understand? It's me it wants. If you interfere, you'll only make it angry.”

Stepping closer to the door at the corridor's far end, I tell myself that I can deal with an intruder if that's what I find. After all, I took a few self-defense classes a while back. Well, two classes, but that's better than nothing. At the same time, I'm starting to think that whatever's in the house with us, it's something that has been here every night for quite some time, constantly tormenting and harassing my aunt. Finally I reach the door, which has been left ajar, and I push it open to reveal the room on the other side.

It's empty.

And the sound of footsteps has stopped.

Stepping into the room, I look around, but there's absolutely nothing in here. I'm certain this is where the banging sound was coming from, and there's no way anyone could have left without coming right past me. This was one of the old rooms used by the house's staff, back in the days when Emily's family still employed servants and maids, but now there's definitely no-one in here.

Heading over to the window, I peer out and see the forest, with the mausoleum picked out in a patch of moonlight. Suddenly I remember a hand touching my shoulder in the dark, all those years ago. And then I turned around, and I heard someone giggling.

I turn and look back across the empty room.

“Is somebody here?” I ask out loud.

Silence.

“It's okay,” I continue. “If you're here, I just...”

I take a deep breath. This is ridiculous, but I still need to know for sure.

“If you're here, just give me a sign. Just let me know.”

I wait, but now the entire house seems absolutely quiet. Figuring that I need to ask my aunt some more questions, I head back out of the room and along the corridor, before stopping suddenly as I see that Emily is nowhere to be seen.

“Aunt Emily?” I call out, trying not to panic. “Aunt Emily, it's me! It's Rebecca! Where are you?”

Hearing no response, I hurry along the corridor and through to the main part of the house, but the entire place seems deserted now. I stop on the landing, listening for even the slightest noise that might give me a clue as to where I might find her, but a moment later I spot a flash of movement outside. Hurrying to the window, I'm horrified to see my frail aunt scrambling across the moonlit lawn, making her way toward the trees.

I rush down the stairs and grab a coat from the rack in the hallway, before racing outside and around to the lawn. Aunt Emily is almost at the tree-line now, but she's already dropped down onto her hands and knees. I hurry over and kneel next to her, quickly placing the coat around her shivering shoulders, but suddenly she rolls onto her side and lets out a faint, pained gasp as she stares up at me.

“I have to get you inside,” I tell her. “Aunt Emily, what's going on here, what -”

“Do you see her?” she stammers, her eyes widening with shock. “Barbara saw her once, a long time ago. That's how I know it's real, how I know I'm not losing my mind.”

“Saw who?” I ask.

“She's...” She stares at me for a moment, but slowly I start to realize that her milky eyes are actually looking
past
me, as if there's someone standing over my shoulder. “She's right there,” she whispers.

“Who?”

I wait for her to answer, before slowly turning. I half expect to find some kind of spectral figure staring down at me, but to my immense relief I see no-one at all.

“I heard her every night,” my aunt continues. “Just the two of us left in the house.”

“Who?” I ask again, looking across the lawn just in case there's any sign of someone watching us. “Who are you -”

Suddenly Aunt Emily lets out another, louder gasp, and I turn to see that she's clutching her left arm.

“Aunt Emily?” I stammer, placing a hand on her forehead and realizing that she's sweating profusely. “Aunt Emily, tell me what you feel,” I continue, trying not to panic even though I think she might be going into cardiac arrest. “Aunt Emily, does you arm hurt? What about your chest and your jaw?”

“I see her,” she groans, still looking past me. “She's always been here, since long before I came. She's waiting for something.”

Checking her pulse, I try to work out what to do next. My phone is still in my car, and I need to call an ambulance, but I'm not sure Emily will last that long. I can't leave her.

“Aunt Emily,” I say firmly, “I'm a doctor, remember? I think you're having a heart attack, so I'm going to need to -”

Suddenly she gasps, and her whole body becomes tense. I grab hold of her shoulders, but she seems to be going into some kind of seizure.

“Aunt Emily!” I shout. “You have to stay with me!”

She lets out a faint, low gurgling sound, and I quickly realize that she must have swallowed her tongue. Forcing her mouth open, I reach my fingers inside and fumble for the tongue's root, and sure enough I find that it has twisted back toward her throat. It takes a moment, and my fingers slip several times on the tongue root, but finally I manage to clear her airway, although she immediately lets out a series of rasping gurgles that seem to be coming from the very back of her throat.

Climbing onto her, I check her pulse again and then finally I start chest compressions.

“You're going to be fine,” I tell her, “I promise. I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

***

Ten minutes later, I finish the latest set of compressions and then lean down, hoping against hope that she might finally have started breathing. I check her pulse, but there's still nothing.

“Come on,” I whisper, starting again. “Come back to me.”

***

By the time I finally accept the inevitable, I've been working to save her for almost half an hour. I check for a pulse one final time, and then I hold the back of my hand against her face in case there's any hint of breath, and then I climb off her and look down at her dead eyes.

She's still staring at the same spot, as if there's someone behind me.

Reaching out, I close her eyes and then I sit back on the grass. My whole body is trembling, and I feel as if my chest is impossibly tight. The first tear trickles down my cheek. Checking my watch, I make a mental note of Aunt Emily's time of death.

1:53am. Just like the stopped grandfather clock in the hallway.

Chapter Fifty-
Four

Bright morning sunlight streams through the window of Uncle Martin's study as I make my way around the desk and take a seat. With the ambulance having left just a few minutes ago, taking my aunt's body away, I'm now all alone at Auercliff, and I feel like I'm going to lose my mind if I don't get some answers.

I start going through the drawers, and I quickly find a set of old black notebooks. Turning to the first page of one, I find that Uncle Martin seems to have been working on some kind of family history, and for the next few hours I sit silently flicking from page to page, reading but not really understanding all the notes he left in his spidery handwriting. Somehow the process feels strangely calming, and I'm relieved when I find an envelope containing a stash of old photos.

I can lose myself in these for hours.

“Verity, aged seven,” I read out loud from the back of one of the photos, before turning it around and seeing the smiling face of a little girl with a prominent cleft lip.

The next photo shows a group of people I don't recognize at all, but Martin has helpfully written the names Roger, Reginald, Mary, Harriet and Jonathan on the back. One of the people is a very old man, and I vaguely remember seeing in one of the notebooks that Uncle Martin's grandfather was named Jonathan, and that he was the son of Sir Charles and Lady Catherine. I set the photo down, while making a mental note of all the family connections.

Another, larger photo shows a group of people standing on the steps at the front of the house. Most of them appear to be members of the aristocracy, but there are a couple of women who appear to be members of staff. Turning the photo over, I see a list of names, followed by another note in Uncle Martin's handwriting.

“Matilda Granger,” I read out loud. “I cannot explain it, but she is the woman I saw at Doctor Farrah's office.”

Remembering some mention of an incident at the doctor's office in town, I grab the notebooks and flick through them again, quickly finding the relevant section.

“I would have made the most terrible mistake that day,” Uncle Martin wrote, “had it not been for the intervention of a woman I had never seen before, and have never seen since. She seemed almost to be waiting for me at Farrah's surgery, and she persuaded me that I should not try to deal with my grief by killing the man. Not a day goes by that I do not thank the Lord for that woman's intervention, but I have never been able to understand who she was, or how she happened to know what I was planning. Lately, however, I have seen a photograph of a woman who was once in my great-grandfather's employment, a woman named Matilda Granger. And though Matilda Granger died more than half a century before I was born, I swear she is the woman I encountered at the doctor's surgery that day.”

I take another look at the photo, but my attention is quickly drawn to the face of Lady Catherine Switherington. In all honesty, I don't think I've ever seen a woman with such crazy eyes. She looks absolutely insane.

“Granger,” I whisper suddenly, realizing that I've heard that name before. “Matilda Granger. What if -”

Before I can finish, I hear the sound of a car approaching the building, stopping outside on the gravel driveway.

Figuring that someone has come to pay their condolences, having heard about Aunt Emily's death, I head out of the study and into the hallway. I can hear footsteps now, approaching the door from the other side, and I take a deep breath before pulling the door open.

And that's when, for the first time in five years, I come face to face with my mother.

“Your brother told me you were here,” she says sourly, clearly unimpressed as she removes her gloves. “Well, where's batty old Emily, then? Have you been having fun here with my sister?”

***

I watch as she raises the glass of whiskey in her trembling hand and takes a sip. As much as I hate my mother, I can't deny that I feel a little sorry for her right now as she stares out the window. After all, she just learned that her sister is dead. She looks shocked, pale, perhaps a little haggard. I've never seen her look anything other than strong before, even if at times I cursed that strength and wanted her to crumble.

“Did she suffer?” she asks finally.

“It was very quick,” I reply, figuring that it'd be as well to avoid going into details.

“That's not what I asked,” she continues, turning to me. “I asked if she suffered.”

“There was no -”

“Don't talk to me like a fucking doctor,” she snaps, “talk to me like a...” She pauses, eying me with a hint of suspicion. “I'm just asking you if she suffered.”

“I don't think so,” I lie. “I mean, she seemed confused...”

“Well
there's
a newsflash,” she says with a sigh, before downing the rest of the whiskey and immediately pouring herself another. Once she's set the bottle back down, she freezes for a moment, as if her entire body is tensing with grief. “The woman spent most of her life confused,” she adds, taking another sip. “Perhaps it was her way of abdicating responsibility for everything around her.”

“Maybe you should slow down,” I reply.

“Maybe
you
should try -” She stops suddenly. “I hope you realize your aunt was completely out of her mind,” she continues, watching me with a hint of caution. “Anything she might have said over the past few days should be taken with a pinch of salt. The woman's marbles all rolled out of her hears a long time ago, you cannot trust or believe a word she might have said.”

“I think she was suffering from dementia,” I tell her.

She rolls her eyes. “I could have told you that years ago. Your brother said you were worried about her and -”

“I found a dead body in the house,” I add, interrupting her.

“Your -” She pauses. “Your aunt's body, yes, you already -”

“No, another. It had been there for a while. It was in one of the spare rooms, off in the western wing. Aunt Emily didn't seem to know anything about it.”

This seems to shut her up for a moment, and I watch as she downs the rest of whiskey and pours herself yet another. I swear, she suddenly seems a little paler.

“Do you know who it might have been?” I ask.

I wait, but the news seems to have shaken her and her hands are trembling more than before. In the space of just a few seconds, she looks several years older and frailer.

“Any ideas?” I continue. “Why are you here, anyway? You haven't been to Auercliff for more than a decade, you swore you'd never -”

“Can't I decide to drop in and visit my dear sister?” she replies a little defensively. If I didn't know her better, I'd swear she's close to tears. “Perhaps I just felt charitable and wanted to make sure that she was okay. Is that so hard to believe, or do you think I'm a complete monster?”

“Do you know of anyone else who might have been in the house with her?”

“What did she say when you asked
her
?”

“She was incapable of giving a sensible answer.”

“Well, there you go.” She pours another whiskey, but her hands are shaking worse than ever. “How am I supposed to know what that mad old bat was getting up to? Rattling around all alone in this big old house, she -”

“But that's the point,” I continue, “she
wasn't
alone so -”

“Why does it matter, eh?” she adds. “Emily's dead, the other person in the house is apparently dead, so what's the point of raking it all over? Maybe your aunt had a secret or two that she wanted to keep. I think she should be allowed that privilege, don't you? The past is bullshit anyway.”

“But the truth -”

“Oh grow up!” she snaps. “There's no such thing as truth. There's fact, and there's opinion, but truth is just some juvenile obsession that most people are over by your age.”

She raises the glass to her lips, but this time she doesn't quite drink. Instead, she seems locked in thought once again. I've seen that look in her eye before. She's planning something.

“I don't get why you're suddenly pretending to care, anyway,” she continues finally, as the familiar waspishness returns to her voice. “I thought you'd absolved yourself of all interest in the family a few years ago. No calls at birthdays or Christmas, no replies to messages.” She sighs. “In fact, you might as well fuck off right now, I can deal with everything here. Don't worry, Rebecca, nobody expects you to help them, or to comfort them, or to be there for them. You can go off to your lovely selfish life and pretend that the rest of us don't exist.”

“That's not fair,” I reply, shocked by her words.

“Isn't it?” she snaps. “I haven't heard from you in -”

“I'm not doing this now,” I say firmly, feeling as if I need to get the hell out of this room before Mum and I end up in another huge slanging match. “I found some of Uncle Martin's old papers in his study, so I think I'm going to go look through them for a while. And I have to look in some of the rooms upstairs, too, to see if Aunt Emily left anything. I just want to go through the history of her family, so...” My voice trails off. “I don't know what you want to do, but I've got my plan.”

With that, I turn and head out of the room before she has a chance to offload any more vitriol in my direction. By the time I get to the hallway, however, I feel as if my chest is about to implode, and I have to stop and lean against the wall. My mother has long had this effect on me, and she seems to be in overdrive today. I guess nothing has changed there. If I spend too much time around her, I always end up with this pounding, sickening sensation in my gut. Perhaps I felt sorry for her when I had to tell her about Emily, but that moment has already passed.

Maybe I'm just an awful person.

Finally I hurry up the stairs and make my way to Aunt Emily's bedroom. Once I'm safely inside and I've shut the door, I head over to her bedside table and open the top drawer. Sure enough, I find several more notebooks and old letters inside, so I sit down and start sorting through them all. After a few minutes, I'm even able to drown out the sound of my mother storming about downstairs.