Property of a Lady(34)
‘The society might not exist any longer,’ said Nell.
‘No. And even if we did find Alice, she’d be pretty elderly now. That journal was written in the nineteen sixties, and she mentioned a boyfriend who was killed at Hiroshima.’
‘Nineteen forty-five,’ said Nell, nodding. ‘That means she’d have to be at least forty when she was at Charect.’
‘Yes, and in that case— Hold on, I think this is the turning for St Paul’s Church. Or is it?’ He slowed down, peering doubtfully at the road.
Nell found this uncertainty rather endearing. She said, ‘I think it’s right – I can see the church spire from here.’
‘That’s how I found the place yesterday,’ he said, turning the car into the lane. ‘I just looked for a spire and drove towards it. If I got lost I was going to phone Inspector Brent and call out the cavalry.’
‘But you weren’t sure, not at that point, that Beth would be there.’
‘No, but I’d rather have looked stupid in front of the police than take the chance of missing her,’ he said, and Nell was so deeply grateful to him she could not speak for several minutes.
St Paul’s was, Nell supposed, a fairly typical country church: not very big, not particularly attractive or graceful, just a mass of grey stones that had been put here so the local people could worship. Once it would have been the centre of the small community, but now it did not look as if anyone had been here for years. The thought of Beth out here alone, in the dark coldness, twisted painfully around Nell’s heart again. We will leave here as soon as we can, she thought. Once I know Beth’s completely recovered, I’ll sell the shop and we’ll go. But then she remembered that other little girl, sobbing with terror at what might happen to Elvira, having to be forcibly sedated, and she realized that leaving Marston Lacy would feel like abandoning Ellie Harper.
Michael led the way through the old lychgate. As they went along the uneven path it began to rain – the same relentless rain as yesterday. Nell shivered and turned up her coat collar. Seeing this, Michael paused under an ancient cedar. ‘We should have brought an umbrella,’ he said. ‘I’ve got one in the car, I think. Stay here and I’ll dash back to get it.’
He was gone before Nell could say anything, and for a moment she watched him half-run between the trees, towards the road, then she turned back to look round the churchyard. The headstones jutted up out of the ground like black teeth, but the actual graves were covered with thick, soft grass; in spring and summer there might be the hazy colours of bluebells beneath the trees or primroses. And there was a serenity about the place which Nell had not expected. The thought of Beth being out here on her own would still give her nightmares, but it was not quite as macabre as she had feared. And you survived, Beth, thought Nell. I got you back.
Little clouds of mist rose from the grass, and the rain drained any colour the church might have possessed. Nell quite liked rain if she was indoors; she liked watching it beating against the windows. But this rain was thin and spiteful, and if you listened intently you could almost believe spiky little voices chattered inside it. The murmuring of demons, Alice had written. Nell shivered and peered through the dripping trees, hoping to see Michael returning, but it was difficult to see or hear anything in this rainstorm. No, it was all right, he was coming back now, she could hear footsteps.
And then, between one heartbeat and the next, she suddenly knew it was not Michael, and apprehension scudded across her skin like the prickle of electricity before a thunderstorm. Nell pressed back against the tree trunk, not wanting to be seen, knowing this to be ridiculous because even if it was not Michael it would be some perfectly innocent visitor to the church – a tourist or even one of Inspector Brent’s men: he had said something about the forensic team checking the place.
But apprehension was still clutching her because tourists did not usually walk through pouring rain at nine o’clock in the morning to view undistinguished, semi-derelict churches, and forensic experts would be noisy, lugging along cases and cameras. And neither tourists nor policemen would walk slowly and uncertainly, as if making a blind fumbling way towards the graves . . .
As this last thought formed, Nell became aware that something was disturbing the lonely serenity of the church and its surroundings – a sound so fragile it could barely be heard by human ears.
Dead souls sobbing, wolves whispering . . .
She stood very still, listening intently. The sounds came and went, like a bad radio or TV signal. She was about to call out or make a dash for the lychgate when something moved on the edge of her vision, something that was not quite substantial enough to be a figure but that was more than the curtain of rain. A figure moving between the trees, was it? For pity’s sake, this was turning into every classic ghost scenario ever written! But there had been something, she was sure of it.
The sounds were forming a definite pattern – forming words, a faint rhythm.
‘At the midnight hour, beneath the gallows tree . . .
Hand in hand the Murderers stand . . .
By one, by two, by three . . .
Open lock to the dead man’s knock . . .’
Horror closed around Nell’s throat. It was the rhyme – the rhyme Alice had heard that night, the rhyme Beth talked about and Ellie had known. She waited, but the eerie chanting had stopped and she could only hear the rain pattering on the leaves and against the walls of the church. And then footsteps, blessedly ordinary footsteps, came towards her, and there was the bright colour of an umbrella and Michael’s voice calling that he was sorry to have been so long, but he had dropped the car keys and they had rolled into the ditch and nearly been washed down a roadside grid, and he was covered in mud from retrieving the wretched things. This small, ordinary thing was somehow so reassuring that Nell smiled. Because, of course, those sounds had been simply the rain and the dripping trees mixed up with her own nervous tension. Anyone would be jumpy and a bit over-imaginative in a deserted old graveyard, for goodness’ sake.