The Silence (12 page)

Continuation of Samuel Burlap’s statement:

The children of Caudle Moor didn’t know everything that happened at the Acton trial, but details reached us in fragments and shreds, like bloodied strings snaking outwards. Children don’t always find out what goes on in the adult world, but they overhear bits of talk and they pick up fear and suspicion from their elders. There was plenty of that in Caudle in those weeks.

There was no suspicion on the night a group of us children went up to Acton House, though. That was sheer downright curiosity. And perhaps there was a wish to prove how brave we were.

The servants had all left Acton House after Isobel’s arrest, and the house was closed up. Sergeant Neale was supposed to be keeping watch on it in case of vagrants and gypsies and suchlike, but he wasn’t there that night we went, and even if he had been, we knew all the tricks for dodging policemen.

There were five of us and Edgar Gilfillan was one of the five – of course he was; catch that one missing out on a bit of local excitement. He said God was with us on this journey, but Matt McCardle, whose father farmed several hundred acres over to Caudle Magna, said if that was so, it was to be hoped the Almighty wouldn’t want a share of the liquorice sticks we had bought from Mr Billock’s sweet shop, because there were only just enough to go round.

We had chosen our time carefully. It was the hour after school, but not yet supper time, which meant most of our mothers would be busy and most of our fathers still working. My father was in the forge, I knew that, for it was just starting to grow dark and I could see the glow against the sky. You could sometimes see it across the whole of Caudle Village at dusk.

As we went along, we boasted about what we would do when we got to the house – how we would get into the Murder Room, and play Isobel Acton’s piano and dance around the room. Edgar Gilfillan was against this. He said if we disturbed Simeon Acton’s soul, we should hear it screaming, because the souls of the murdered never lay quiet in their graves. He talked about this all the way along Gorsty Lane until Matt McCardle threw him in a nettle bed. After that Edgar was too busy searching for dock leaves to worry about the screaming souls of the murdered dead.

There oughtn’t to be anything particularly fearsome about an empty old house standing by itself, but Acton House was very frightening indeed. I think secretly we all wanted to say, ‘Let’s go home,’ but no one did for fear of appearing a coward. We went along the path with the thick shrubs and listening trees, and the crouching stones that in the twilight almost had leering faces like the stones on churches. I remember somebody stumbled on an uneven bit of path, and the sound of stones skittering across the ground made us all jump.

We stood in front of the house, staring at it, trying to pluck up courage to approach it. Once I thought something nearby sighed, and once a figure seemed to move across one of the windows, but when I pointed to it, the others said it was only the reflection of the clouds.

Then Edgar grabbed my arm, making me yelp. ‘Don’t do that,’ I said, jerking my arm free.

‘But listen. I can hear something.’

‘Well, nobody else can, and if you’re starting on about screaming souls again you can shut up or go back in the nettle patch,’ Matt said, crossly.

‘No, really listen,’ said Edgar, sounding genuinely scared.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ I said. ‘You’re just being—’ Then I stopped, because I could hear it as well.

‘I can hear it, too,’ said one of the others, in a shaky voice. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s piano music, you ignorant peasant, don’t you know music when you hear it?’

‘And there’s someone sobbing,’ said a voice from the back of the group.

‘It can’t be inside the house,’ I said firmly. ‘Isobel Acton’s at the police station, locked away, and the servants have all gone.’

‘Edgar’s right, though. There is someone in there,’ said Matt, very quietly, as if fearing to be overheard.

I don’t know what the others were thinking, but for several moments I believed Isobel had escaped from the police cell and returned to her house. For an even wilder moment, I wondered if we had stumbled into some kind of evil magic, like something from a storybook, and that the murder was about to happen all over again – even that it would keep on happening for years and years. I didn’t say that, of course. Nor did I tell them I recognized the chill music as the music Isobel Acton had played the day she killed her husband.

Then, as if an unspoken decision had been made, we all crept towards the latticed windows, which were wreathed in shadows. We went on tiptoe, glancing over our shoulders as we did so – it was dreadfully easy to believe someone tiptoed after us, dodging behind a tree or a shrub if we turned to look. And so we reached the window of the music room.

A woman was seated at the piano. She had a ravaged face, drained of all colour by the moonlight and she was bowed over the keys, playing that cold light music with what I can only call an intensity – although I didn’t know that word then. As she played, she sobbed in a way I had never heard anyone sob before. It did not need Edgar’s whisper of, ‘Anne-Marie Acton,’ to tell us who this was. I think we all felt a shiver of fear, because the sobbing was so wretched and so wild and uncontrolled. It was as if thick choking grief filled up the room, like clotted grey fog.

She paused, and we cowered down, thinking she had heard us, but she had not. When we dared look again she had turned towards a glass door behind her, and she was staring into the garden so eagerly I thought she had heard someone, and was waiting to welcome whoever it was. Then I knew that was not right. She had not heard anyone, but she was waiting to do so. She wanted to hear or see someone with such fierce longing – such hunger and such need – it was thrumming through her, stretching and straining her muscles and the tendons of her neck and hands. If you’ve ever seen someone waiting to see a loved one – longing to see them with every nerve in their body, after a long absence, perhaps – you’ll know what I mean.

Then her shoulders slumped and she turned back to the piano and began playing again, still sobbing. Again she broke off and turned to the window. Her lips moved, and by leaning forward I was able to make out what she said.

‘Please . . .’
Then again,
‘Oh, please . . . Let him come to me . . . Let the music have called him here . . .’

And the incredible thing was that with the words, something seemed to move across the open glass door – something that was not quite formed, but that seemed to be trying to take human shape . . . As if the music had spun the figure out of strings of moonlight and shreds of melody. (I do
know
how absurd that sounds, but it’s what I believed that night).

At the sight of this misshapen figure, Anne-Marie’s whole body tensed even more. She said, ‘Simeon? Is it you? Let it be you – I will give my soul to the devil and all his minions if it can be you . . . I will never leave here until you come back . . .
Never.
’

For a few seconds the outline that might have been nothing more than a glimmer of moonlight seemed to take more definite shape. It was as if it was trying to be human – trying to do what she wanted – but we didn’t stay to see. We moved as one, half falling back from the window, and running helter-skelter through the dark gardens of Acton House, along the uneven paths, and out onto Gorsty Lane. Even when we reached the lane we kept running, heedless of the thickening dusk, and we didn’t stop until we could see the village square and the flaring sconces outside The Pheasant and the lights in the windows of several of the houses. Safe . . . I could feel the word form in all our minds, and we slowed to a walk, trembling and sweating with having run so far and so hard, still deeply scared.

Edgar got his breath back first. He said, ‘She was calling him. Miss Acton was calling her dead brother. She thought he could come back to her – she thought she could call him back to life.’ He sounded horrified but also fascinated.

‘She thought old Simeon could come back through the music?’ said Matt, half disbelieving, but also clearly remembering that not-quite-formed shape in the doorway and the queer urgency of the music.

‘Yes,’ said Edgar, although even he did not sound sure.

‘You can’t call back the dead, not by music or anything else,’ I said.

‘People in the Bible did. Saul did.’

‘Saul tried to do it. Nothing to say he managed it.’

Edgar shrugged in a way that meant he knew better. ‘We all saw what we saw,’ he said. ‘Whether it works or not, Miss Acton was trying to reach the spirit of Simeon Acton. Even if we don’t believe it, she did.’

‘And,’ said one of the others, ‘she said she would never leave Acton House until Simeon came back.’ We all shivered again and Matt ducked his head as if frightened to look anyone in the eye. Straight afterwards we all went off to our homes, and none of us spoke about what we had seen ever again.

And now, Doctor, I see you and your young lady looking at me as if you think I’m talking like something out of a penny novelette. But grief takes folk strangely. Sometimes they’ll try anything to reach those who’ve died. I know it isn’t sane, but I believe Anne-Marie Acton was mad with grief that night. Even now I can remember the scalding torrent of pain that came from her – wave upon wave of it, so vicious and so strong it seemed to bubble like acid into the walls and the bricks and the timbers, then trickle down into the ground and soak into the very earth.

You may discount everything I’ve said, but there’s one thing you can’t discount, and that’s the music. Anne-Marie Acton’s music. Believe me, that’s what I heard three nights ago on the old Acton land. That same music Anne-Marie played that long-ago evening when she tried to call back her dead brother. And I’m not the only one to have heard it – you know that. There’s plenty of others.

Anne-Marie said she would never leave that house until Simeon came back and she never has. The old house – Acton House – has gone, but the land’s still there. Land stays, it can’t be burned or broken. It holds secrets. The Acton land holds the secrets and the fears and the madnesses.

That boy knows about the secrets. Esmond, that’s his name. Esmond West. I’ve seen him looking about him when he comes to the site with his father. I’ve seen the look in his eyes and I can tell that he knows.’

Caudle and East Derby Gazette

SCENES IN COURTROOM

A verdict of Not Guilty was yesterday pronounced on Isobel Acton, who has been standing trial for the murder of her husband, Mr Simeon Acton.

Readers will recall that Mr Acton died earlier this year, from arsenical poisoning. Mrs Acton was charged and arrested shortly afterwards.

Local feeling had run high over the murder and Mrs Acton had been subjected to abuse and threats. Simeon Acton, whose family had lived in Caudle Moor for several generations, was greatly respected and revered, being a noted philanthropist and having built and endowed the almshouses on the outskirts of Caudle Village. [Editor’s note: see photos and article about Caudle Almshouses on page 6].

Mrs Acton stood very quietly in the dock throughout, [editor’s note: a temporary structure built by the local carpenter, and set just beneath the plaque commemorating the names of local men from the 95th Derbyshire, who had fallen in the Crimean War], and, when called on to give her evidence, did so in a low, subdued voice. Several times our reporter had to edge nearer to the dock in order to hear her. It was noticeable that the judge, Mr Justice Marplot, also found it necessary to lean forward to hear her.

She testified to having no idea how the arsenic could have got into her husband’s coffee, but openly admitted that there was a small supply of arsenic in the house, which she occasionally used in a weak solution for whitening her hands. Asked if she knew the substance to be dangerous, she said she did know, she supposed everyone knew, and added that she had always taken the greatest care to keep the packet locked in her dressing table.

Each day Mrs Acton appeared wearing a different set of garments, always in black according to her widowed state, but (your reporter is assured) always very stylish as to cut and cloth. There was much speculation among the female members of the public as to what she would wear on the final day, when the verdict would be given, and Mrs Acton did not disappoint them, donning a black silk grosgrain skirt and jacket, with a cloche hat and veil. [Editor’s note: see our fashion correspondent’s sketch on page 4].

The jury had been in conclave for more than twenty-four hours, using an upper room in The Pheasant. Our reporter was told by a confidential source, that there was much discussion and strong differences of opinion between them before an agreement was eventually reached.

Mrs Acton faced them with composure when they came in, but as she stood up, she gripped her hands tightly together.

The foreman, Mr George Poulson, son of The Pheasant’s landlord, gave the verdict clearly and firmly, but with the pronouncing of the words, “Not Guilty”, there was an outcry from the public benches. Many of the locals leapt to their feet, shouting their anger and contempt, and waving their fists at the prisoner. One of them, Miss Anne-Marie Acton, sister of the deceased Simeon Acton, went so far as to run to the centre of the court and vow vengeance on Mrs Acton for her brother’s death, calling her by several derogatory names, which this paper is not permitted to print. Mrs Acton appeared unmoved, but Miss Acton, having reached the end of her tirade, collapsed in sobbing distress, and had to be taken into custody. However, the magistrates were sympathetic to her bereaved state, and merely bound her over to keep the peace for a token term of three months. Others who had been part of the fracas were not so fortunate; three gentlemen were given a probationary sentence of one year, two ladies were fined the sum of half a guinea for contempt of court, and an elderly resident of the village, Mr Nehemiah Goodbody, suffered two bruised toes from having a bandaged foot stamped on in the fracas by Sergeant Neale. He later told our reporter it was a crying shame when folk could not sit to enjoy a murder trial without being trod on by a flatfoot policeman. (We should add here that Sergeant Neale later apologized most profusely to Mr Goodbody).

It is understood that Madame Acton, released from her ordeal, will remain in Acton House for a short time only, after which the house will be closed and she will travel abroad for an indefinite period.