The Death Chamber (2 page)

‘I know.’

‘How long has the lease actually got to run? . . .
How
long? Oh dear. You’d better try to sub-let. And there’s the stock.’ This was said with a glance at the
fabric swatches, books of wallpaper patterns, and the narrow shop window with the careful display of chairs covered in William Morris patterned material and silky waterfalls of fabric. Georgina and
the perfidious partner had tried to be thrifty over the buying in of fabrics and papers, but it had been necessary to have bales of material for curtains and sofa coverings on hand, and to have a
few choice pieces of furniture to set colours and materials against as well.

‘You’ll probably have to sell what you can,’ said the accountant, having taken in the nearly Chippendale chairs, the little Regency table and a few other things. Some pieces
had been bought quite cheaply in street markets, but the sort of clients Georgina and her partner had been targeting knew the difference between Christie’s and the Portobello Road, so the
showroom furniture had had to be good. ‘You’ll only get a fraction of what you originally paid, anyway.’

‘I know.’

‘George, I wish you’d stop saying you know and think what you’re going to do next.’

‘I know exactly what I’m going to do next,’ said Georgina. ‘I’m going to drive up to Thornbeck to find out about my great-grandfather’s peculiar bequest to
this Caradoc Society.’

‘Is there likely to be any money in it?’

‘Well, that’s not why I’m going, but if I’m lucky I might get next month’s rent out of it.’

‘Where will you stay in Thornbeck?’

‘At Caradoc House. The local pub’s a bit booked up. Vincent Meade says a television company’s in Thornbeck – they’re assessing whether to use an old prison in some
programme that focuses on unusual buildings. C.R. Ingram’s researching the possibility.’

‘That sounds rather fun,’ said the accountant. ‘Is it the C.R. Ingram who writes those books about ancient cultures and the human psyche and the power of the imagination and
whatnot?’

‘I think so. I don’t expect there’s more than one C.R. Ingram.’

‘He’s quite eminent,’ said the accountant. ‘I saw that TV documentary he did last year about the empty reassurances of religion. He followed it up with a book.’

‘
Talismans of the Mind,
’ said Georgina. ‘I didn’t read it, but I saw the programme.’

‘Didn’t the Archbishop of Canterbury condemn it, or the Pope issue a proclamation or something?’

‘I don’t think it got as far as that,’ said Georgina. ‘One or two vicars might have objected.’

‘Still, he’s probably worth meeting if you can engineer it, although personally I wouldn’t trust a man who goes by his initials.’

‘I wouldn’t trust any man at all,’ said Georgina, and went to phone estate agents about sub-letting the shop and after that to look out road maps for the journey to
Cumbria.

The drive to Thornbeck took longer than Georgina expected, but she did not mind because it almost felt as if she was leaving the tangled mess of faithless lovers and failed
business ventures behind, and entering a different world altogether. By the time she got onto the northbound M6, she was thinking how good it was not to have David with her unfavourably comparing
her car with newer, faster ones on the road and looking out for hotels and restaurants with Egon Ronay stars where they could have lunch. Remembering this Georgina took a perverse pleasure in
pulling into a service station near Coventry, and buying ham rolls and fruit which she ate in the car.

By the time she left the motorway it was growing dark. The roads were becoming steeper and mountains reared up on the horizon; they were bleakly monochrome in the failing light and slightly
menacing, but Georgina thought them beautiful. You could plan an entire room in those colours; rather minimalist it would have to be. Soft grey walls, with inset oblongs of cream . . . velvety
sofas in that really deep charcoal that was not quite black but much darker than grey . . . modern, matt black pottery . . . She remembered with a fresh stab of bitterness that the days of planning
beautiful rooms were temporarily on hold.

The further north she went, the more the place names began to have the cadences of Old England, and even of Middle Earth. Ambleside and Ravenglass; Thirlspot and Drigg; Grizedale Forest. This
was all unexpectedly restful.

She skirted Wast Water, which was the loneliest, most broodingly sullen stretch of water she had ever seen, and thought that if the car broke down out here she would be marooned. Probably she
would become one of the many ghosts that lurked here, and people of the future would refer sombrely to an early twenty-first-century traveller who had vanished one late-autumn day. ‘No one
knew where she came from,’ they might say, ‘and no one ever knew what happened to her, but on moonless nights her shade can occasionally be seen, wringing its hands . . .’

This image cheered Georgina up so much that she drove all the way round Wast Water singing the famous feminist anthem, ‘I Will Survive’ with discordant defiance, after which, in
deference to the surroundings, she went on to ‘River Deep, Mountain High’. At least David was not there to wince, make sarcastic comments and pointedly switch on the radio.

She reached a set of crossroads, and pulled onto the side of the road to check the map. Straight across, sharp right, and then it was about six miles to Thornbeck, which was the merest fleck on
the map. Good. She had just taken the right turn, when she saw the weather-beaten signpost with its worn lettering pointing down a narrow lane leading away from the main road. It was the kind of
lane that was so narrow you might easily miss it altogether, but Georgina did not miss it. She slowed down to study it.

TO CALVARY it said, and underneath, in smaller, faded letters, were the words,
TWO MILES
, and a tiny arrow pointing the way.

Calvary. It was not precisely a place name you would expect to see on a signpost in the heart of this quintessentially English countryside in the twenty-first century, but it was a deeply
evocative word. You had only to see it written or hear it spoken aloud, and you instantly saw the image of the hill in Jerusalem, and the stark rearing silhouette of the crucifixion. It did not
matter if you had not travelled any further east than the Norfolk Broads, or if you had spent your life in a remote Tibetan valley and never been within hailing distance of a Christian church; it
was an image that everyone, regardless of beliefs or disbeliefs, recognized.

Georgina recognized these images as well as anyone, but for her the word also conjured fragments of memories handed down within her family. ‘Your great-grandfather was a doctor . .
.’ ‘He worked in a prison – Calvary Gaol in Cumbria, where they took condemned men to be executed . . .’

So down that lonely looking lane was Calvary. Had Walter lived there – had he been entitled to prison quarters – or had he had a house somewhere nearby? Georgina wished all over
again that she knew more about him. It was somehow unfair of him not to have left any memories behind, although it made him rather a good ancestor because it made him mysterious.

Georgina thought the landscape would have looked much the same in Walter’s time. He must have known this road; he must have travelled along it dozens of times and turned down the narrow
lane. Am I going to do that now? thought Georgina, still staring up at the sign.

She put the car into gear and drove on to Thornbeck, leaving Calvary and its disturbing echoes firmly behind her.

October 1938

Walter Kane almost missed the signpost to Calvary Gaol, but he saw it at the last minute and swung the car sharply across the road and into the narrow lane.

It had been quite a long drive to Thornbeck, but it had been fun because he was still enjoying the novelty of owning a car. It had been an extravagant purchase – if his mother had been
alive, she would have been deeply shocked. A very imprudent thing to have done, she would have said. The action of a spendthrift. Oh Walter, how could you be so feckless? It had always been tacitly
understood that when Walter reached twenty-one and inherited his father’s money outright, it would be sensibly invested. To provide a little income, his mother said; that’s what you
want, Walter, because you won’t make a lot of money from doctoring: don’t expect that you will.

Walter had not said he did not want to make money from being a doctor, and he had not said he did not want his father’s money, either. On his twenty-first birthday he had deposited it in a
bank, vowing he would have to be in very dire financial straits indeed before he touched it, but he had relented sufficiently to draw out enough to buy the car – a dogged little Austin Seven.
It was not really so very spendthrift of him: if he was offered this Calvary appointment a car would be very useful in such a remote place.

No. Let’s be honest about one thing if about nothing else, he thought. The car is because I don’t want any comparisons between this journey and the one my father took along this road
over twenty years ago. I want to arrive at Calvary as my own master, in command of my own life, and I don’t want any ghosts travelling with me.

But the ghosts were with him anyway and, as he drove along the narrow road towards the prison, he found himself thinking that the landscape could not have changed very much since 1917. There
might have been fewer houses then, although the farmhouse across the fields would have existed – to an untrained eye it looked Elizabethan. I don’t suppose you’d have seen it,
though, said Walter to the memory of his father. You wouldn’t have seen the lanes or the hedgerows either. Oh damn, in another minute I’ll be conjuring up a reproachful spectre from the
past, like something out of
Hamlet
, doomed to walk the night, forbidden to tell the secrets of the prison-house. That would be just like my father, as well, because from all accounts he
was fond of dramatic gestures.

But there were no such things as ghosts and if this particular prison-house did have secrets it could keep them locked inside its walls, because he did not want to know what they were. He would
not think about them. He would think instead that his appointment with the board of prison governors was for three o’clock, and if he did not drive a bit faster he would be late. He had no
intention of being late, or of doing anything that might jeopardize his chances of getting this job. He wondered if there would be a house to go with it. It had not been mentioned in the
correspondence, but perhaps they would discuss it during the interview.

He rounded a curve in the lane, and there, looking down from a gentle slope of the English countryside, was Calvary. The place of execution set on the hill.

CHAPTER TWO

‘It’s one of the original murderers’ prisons,’ said Chad Ingram, studying the photographs spread out on the table in the King’s Head coffee room.
‘It’s two hundred years old and brimful of memories, and its execution shed must be absolutely boiling with despair, terror and hatred.’

The youngest member of Chad Ingram’s team, who was a final-year student on loan from Harvard University, and who was bowled over by England in general and by Dr Ingram’s glossy
British courtesy in particular, studied the photographs with absorption and said it was a sinister-looking place.

‘It does look quite sinister but I think that’s partly because it’s built on the top of that sloping ground,’ said Chad. ‘It makes it seem as if it’s staring
down at everything.’

‘I don’t suppose you want my opinion,’ said the third member of the team.

‘But you think it’s a waste of time being here,’ said Chad, smiling.

‘Oh God, the ultimate nightmare – a boss who reads minds. But yes, I do think it’s a waste of time,’ said Drusilla. ‘Calvary’s much too well known.
You’ll never get objective reactions to it.’

The Harvard student considered Drusilla’s statement and then diffidently supported it. His name, to his endless annoyance, was Phineas Farrell, although luckily most people settled for
calling him Phin. He said, ‘See, what we’re trying to do is prove whether or not buildings might have the imprint of their pasts, or if people just react to what they already know,
right?’

‘Quite right, Phin. That’s why we’re avoiding places like the Tower of London or Glamis Castle.’

‘Family monsters and beheaded queens,’ said Drusilla. ‘Too predictable for words. Unless, of course you want to send your viewers to sleep.’

‘But Calvary will almost fall into the same category as those two,’ said Phin, who had secretly been hoping Dr Ingram’s project would take in the Tower and Glamis but would not
now have admitted this to save his life. ‘People mightn’t know the actual history of Calvary, but unless they’re – uh – Martians or something they’d know what
happened inside a condemned cell.’

‘I’d have to agree with Phin on that,’ said Drusilla. ‘People will be halfway to seeing ghosts before you so much as switch on a tape recorder. Actually, Chad, I’m
surprised you got permission to film.’

‘The government’s trying to sell the entire building,’ said Chad. ‘I think they’re hoping a TV programme will help – it sounded as if they were having a bit
of difficulty getting a buyer.’