The Dead of Winter (9 page)

It was so utterly dark I could not see the bed I lay upon, never mind the rest of the room. I stared out like a blind man, the sounds growing in volume, exaggerated by the stillness around me.

Surely that was a human voice? Surely that was a human cry?

As always with noises in the dark, it was difficult at first to discern from whence it came. I sat up in bed and threw away the covers, straining now to hear. There was a creak of floorboards and what sounded like breathing. There could be no doubt: someone was standing outside my door. This was confirmed when the door handle slowly turned.

‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Who’s there?’

The movement of the door handle immediately stopped. But though it remained motionless, I was sure that whoever had moved it was still outside, and so, as stealthily and silently as I could, I crept from my bed towards the door.

As I slowly made my way, arm outstretched, hand open, ready to grasp the handle, the sound of breathing grew louder in my ears and I fancied whoever it was out there stood, even then, with their face pressed up against the woodwork, listening.

I lunged to the door, grabbing the handle and
giving it a deft twist. I hardly knew what to anticipate as I flung wide the door. But I certainly did not think to find no one there at all.

I leapt forward and into the passageway. I looked left and right, peering into the darkness, but I could see nothing and, though I held my breath to listen, there was no sound either.

Could someone have run away so swiftly and soundlessly? It seemed impossible. Yet I was convinced that, up until the moment I had opened the door, there had been someone there.

A sudden recollection of Sir Stephen scurrying away that morning, and of his wild behaviour moments before, came to me as I stood staring into the blackness and I shuddered. Was it he who roamed these passages at night?

I went back into the room to retrieve the lamp that burned by my bedside and came back into the passageway. Holding it out in front of me, and looking again in both directions, I once more confirmed that the passageway was certainly empty.

I began to feel somewhat foolish and had a sudden dread of being caught in that position there by Charlotte or one of the servants. I did not want to have to explain what I was doing. Darkness breeds doubt, and my certainties over the sounds
outside the door had already begun to collapse.

I returned to my room and closed the door behind me. But no sooner had I done so than I distinctly heard footsteps, fleet and short-paced.

The footsteps were running now, running along the passageway, faster and faster, back and forth past my door.

‘Hello?’ I whispered. ‘Who’s there?’

I had said these words in as friendly a way as is possible, albeit with a shakiness borne of nerves. But as I laid my fingers on the handle once again, the door was shaken by pounding of such violence that I almost fell backwards as I recoiled.

The panels buckled and the wood of the frame sounded ready to split, creaking and groaning like the planks of a ship in a storm. The very grain of the wood seemed to squeal. The hinges clattered and shook. Instinctively I leapt forward and turned the key in the lock.

The door handle began to rattle and turn back and forth, back and forth, until suddenly all was silent. I slowly released the breath I had been holding, and then, with equal suddenness, there was the sound of footsteps once again, running away this time. Summoning what little courage I had, I stepped forward and grabbed the door
handle, startled by its coldness against my sweating palm. I turned the key and pulled the door open.

The moon must have risen above the clouds, for a little of its light seeped in through the small windows of the passage. I looked both right and left but could see nothing in either direction. I knew somehow that whoever had been there was there no longer.

I stepped back inside the room with some haste and lost no time in turning the key in its lock once more and taking it with me to place next to my bed. I lay down and covered myself again in bedclothes, but sleep did not come for quite some time and when I awoke my face was turned to the door as it had been when I finally succumbed.

I was awoken by Edith tapping at my door, and was surprised when I heard her walk in and gasp in astonishment. As I raised myself up to look at her, I saw anger on her face for the first time.

‘Sir!’ she said crossly. ‘What have you done?’

‘Done?’ I said blearily. ‘Whatever’s the …’

But then I saw what it was had made Edith so vexed. The floor was strewn all about with spare bedding from the blanket box, my clothes and all manner of things, as if a whirlwind had passed through the room.

‘It’s me that will have to clear this up,’ said Edith
tightly. ‘If Miss Charlotte sees it …’

She began to sob. It took me a few moments to gather my thoughts. My door had been locked. The key was still where I had put it the night before. How? How?

‘I shall clear it up, Edith,’ I said. ‘I promise. Miss Charlotte won’t have anything to complain of.’

‘I suppose it was a fine joke to play on me, then,’ she said between sobs.

‘It wasn’t a joke,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Edith. Truly.’

Edith sighed.

‘I shall come back later when you’re at breakfast, sir,’ she said, and hurriedly left.

Though I stared at the litter around the room in horrible wonder for some minutes, by the time I had tidied up and got dressed to go down to breakfast I had calmed myself a little. I had hoped to wake up to the realisation that I had simply fallen asleep after going to bed exhausted and dreamt the whole thing. It certainly had the flavour of a nightmare.

But it had clearly not been a dream. Somebody had been outside my door. Somebody had tried the handle. Somebody had run away before I could catch them. Somebody had come back when I was asleep and done this to my room. The idea of
someone there when I was asleep was horrible.

I walked down the stairs and into the hall as Charlotte appeared from the drawing room. She moved towards me with her usual silent grace. She was wearing a dress of deepest blue and of a satin sheen and it shimmered like sunlit water as she moved.

‘I trust you slept well, Michael,’ she said, clicking her fingernails together rhythmically.

‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, still reeling from the sight that had greeted me.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said, laying a stiff hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you not comfortable here?’

What was I to answer to a question like that? I smiled as best as I could and said, ‘Yes, of course.’

‘I hope we did not disturb you in the night?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so …’ I said, wondering what she could mean.

‘I’m afraid that Sir Stephen was taken ill again,’ she said. ‘He was very agitated indeed. He was so looking forward to your visit, Michael, but I fear you may see little of him during the remainder of your stay.’

That would hardly present a problem to me, I
thought to myself, and yet it made a mockery of his insistence that I be in that house over Christmas. What difference did it make to him?

Charlotte wished me a pleasant breakfast – she rarely took breakfast, she assured me – and glided down the passageway towards the archway that led to Sir Stephen’s rooms in the tower.

I wondered again if it could have been Sir Stephen who was at my door. Was his mind so fractured and disturbed that he roamed the house at night? I thought of the wild man who had screamed and raved outside the priest hole. It wasn’t difficult to imagine. Perhaps he had another key to my room.

I pictured him stooped over me with his clutching hands … Who knew what he was capable of when in that state? All these questions and more buzzed in my head like angry bees as I walked down to the dining room.

It was a fine morning and bright sunlight did its utmost to puncture the gloom of the house and light my way to breakfast. A number of the windows in the passageway contained fragments of stained glass and these cast a tinted glow on the opposite walls, painting them red, blue and gold. The colour seemed wrong – lurid, almost sickly – in
that sombre house of shadows. I was again left to entertain myself as best I could that day.

This was no easy task in a place as unwelcoming as Hawton Mere, and the hours dragged by. I longed to talk to somebody. I needed to voice my troubled thoughts, to share them. To my surprise, it was Jerwood who came most readily to mind as a confidant, but in any case he was no longer in the house and I had no idea when I might see him again. I also would have liked an opportunity to discover more of what he knew of the mysterious woman, for it was clear that he was hiding something.

I thought too of the kindly Bentleys, and how warm and inviting their house would be right now, and how normal. In fact the portly, jolly Bentleys seemed a positive antidote to joyless Sir Stephen and this dismal place. I winced at how cold I had been to Bentley in return for his kindness and vowed to make amends the next time we met.

After much aimless wandering and many, many games of solitaire, it was time for lunch, which at least was a short affair of cold meats and pie. Charlotte joined me for this meal. I had been concerned that she would still be angry with me over the breaking of the mirror, but, whether she now
accepted I was not to blame or had simply chosen to put it behind us, she made no further mention of the incident and betrayed no hint of lingering annoyance. In fact she seemed to make more than her usual effort to engage me in conversation. But I had come to the conclusion that she was one of those people who feel uncomfortable in the company of children. I was sure that she meant well enough, but it was more like an interview with a well-meaning schoolmistress and I was not upset when she apologised again and said she must attend to some important correspondence.

An afternoon of quiet tedium followed. I walked from room to room once more, looking again at the animal heads and stuffed birds, the paintings and books. I even stood at the top of the steps leading down to the priest hole.

All was silent there now and, though I could not have made myself walk down them for all the tea in China, I could sense that a large part of whatever horror had haunted that place was there no longer. Equally I knew that whatever that was, it was not gone from this house.

The boredom of these wanderings was alleviated by chance meetings with servants. Unlike Charlotte and Sir Stephen, they seemed genuinely
pleased to have a young person about the house, and perhaps happy for an excuse to break off from their chores. They would talk and joke with me and tell me a little of themselves and of life in the village.

On my way back to my room with yet another book from the library, I passed the door to the balcony room and thought I might try the handle again. I reached out, but no sooner had my hand touched it than a voice made my heart leap in my chest.

‘That room’s always locked.’

It was Edith coming up the stairs.

‘I just wondered what room it was,’ I said.

‘That was Her Ladyship’s room,’ said Edith. ‘Sir Stephen likes it kept just as it was.’

I nodded and went on my way. I had learned whose room it was but little else. The mystery of the place remained intact and I settled down on my bed to read my book.

When it was once again time for dinner, I was not surprised to hear that Sir Stephen was still too ill for any company but Charlotte’s and so she would take her meal with him in his study.

I was left alone to wonder what the two of them were talking about up in his tower. Did they talk
about me and, if they did, what did they say? What did Sir Stephen have in store for me? What secrets lay at the heart of Hawton Mere? Having little but these ruminations to entertain me throughout my meal, my eyes rested upon the large tapestry hanging as a curtain at the far end of the room. It was an elaborate creation, filled with branches of foliage on which sat all manner of birds and animals.

It suddenly occurred to me during the study of this decorative curtain that there really ought to be no window in that wall, as it surely backed on to the entrance hall. A door perhaps? But I did not recall seeing a door on the corresponding wall in the hall. If the door had been filled in, then why hang a curtain there?

Perhaps I would have been less intrigued had I not been so eager to rid my mind of all thoughts of the night’s adventures, but I decided to investigate.

I stood up slowly, putting my cutlery down and scraping back my chair. Edith, who was clearing away plates, started at the sound and stood watching me, but I paid her no heed. I walked to the curtain and pulled it aside.

Instead of a window or a door, the curtain concealed a large, life-sized portrait of a woman: a
woman I recognised all too well, despite the fact that I had only glimpsed her once before. Though the woman in the portrait was dressed in expensive clothes and looking a figure of perfect health, I would have known her anywhere.

I stood there utterly transfixed, unable to make any sense of what I was seeing. The maid standing nearby saw my puzzled, pained expression.

‘Bless you, sir,’ she said. ‘She was so beautiful, wasn’t she, Lady Clarendon, poor thing. And not just in her looks, if you take my meaning. We all miss her terrible, God rest her soul.’

‘Lady Clarendon?’ I said.

‘Yes, sir,’ Edith answered, getting a little flustered at my evident perplexity and startled manner. ‘It’s on account of that portrait that Sir Stephen has taken to eating in his room, sir. But he won’t have it removed.’

She chattered on as she left the room, but I was deaf to the words. Lady Clarendon? She was dead. How could that be Lady Clarendon? I had seen her with my own eyes.

What in heaven’s name was happening here? Each secret seemed to have a secret of its own; each shadow hid another shadow darker than the first.

I walked back to my room with a quickening
step, trying to make sense of what had been said. But there seemed no sense to be made of it. I had only glimpsed the woman on the track. Perhaps I had been mistaken. And even if there had been a resemblance, still it did not mean that it was her. She could be some relative perhaps. But why would a relative of Lady Clarendon be roaming the marshes?