The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery(12)
A low light was burning on the stairs, and Michael went quietly along to his bedroom, pleased to discover the radiator had ticked its way to a fair degree of warmth.
But although the room was warm and the bed itself deep and soft, the wind was still whipping across the Fens and Michael kept thinking he could hear whispering voices inside it. By half-past eleven he was still wide awake and wondering whether to go down to the library to see if there was any relatively light reading on the shelves. But perhaps that would disturb Luisa. He refused to acknowledge that he did not want to walk through this house at such an hour, punched his pillow, and lay down again.
The clock had crawled round to midnight, and he was at last sliding into the hinterlands of sleep, when he was jerked awake by a sound that was neither the keening wind, nor even glugging plumbing. It was the sound he had heard earlier – the sound of the front door being rattled. He’s trying again, thought Michael with horror. He didn’t get in earlier, and so he’s come back because he thinks everyone is in bed. I’ll have to do something – alert Luisa – phone the police.
He pulled a sweater over his pyjamas, thrust his feet into shoes and opened his bedroom door. He was not going to engage in any single-handed heroics, but he could at least go as far as the galleried part of the landing and look down into the hall from above.
The wind was still gusting angrily at the windows, causing the worn frames to rattle like dry, dead bones. The drapes at the long windows stirred as if invisible hands clutched at them, and Michael, reaching the landing, saw with relief that the low light was still burning, so that at least this would not be the classic walk through the dark old house. He peered cautiously over the rail. The dim light sent shadows chasing across the floor of the vast hall below, and the trees immediately outside the windows moved their branches back and forth. It was absurd to think their shadows were forming into the outline of a human figure – a figure that was trying to get into the house to be safe …
He went down the stairs and across the hall. The thick old door was still and silent, the heavy bolts in place. Michael put his hand on the surface and felt it creak slightly. Old timbers. Old frame, probably badly-fitting after so many years. Nothing more.
Two narrow windows flanked the door, each with a padded window seat, and Michael went to the nearer one and knelt on the faded velvet, peering out. The glass was old and slightly uneven, and rain streamed down it, distorting the view of the dark gardens beyond. Even so, he did not think anyone was out there. It’s all right, he thought. The house is locked and secured and it’s perfectly safe.
‘Safe … Yes, I always felt safe in this house …’
Stephen, thought Michael, whipping round to scan the shadowy hall. But Stephen had been dead for nearly a century.
He was about to return to his room when a new sound reached him, and something moved at the head of the stairway. Michael’s heart bumped into overdrive, because a figure had walked across the landing above him and was slowly descending the stairs. A figure in whose pallid face the eyes were deeply shadowed so that they resembled dark pits, and who walked with a curious uncoordinated gait as if propelled by some invisible force outside of its control.
He stifled a gasp and instinctively pressed back into the concealment of the window alcove. But before his mind could form Stephen’s name and image again, a thin light fell across the figure and he saw that it was Luisa. Michael, his pulse-rate returning to near-normal, drew a deep breath of relief, and prepared to explain about investigating suspicious noises. Then he saw that no explanation was necessary. Luisa appeared to have no awareness of his presence or even to see him. She was not using the walking stick, and the dreadful puppet-like quality to her movements was unnerving. Her eyes were open, but they were glazed and staring straight ahead. She’s sleepwalking, thought Michael. That’s all this is.
He had an idea that sleepwalkers should not be woken abruptly, so he remained where he was in the window recess, and waited. Luisa crossed the hall. She was dressed as she had been earlier in the evening – the plain dress with the woollen shawl held in place by a silver brooch. No ethereal, floating draperies for this one, thought Michael. Unseeing, unhearing, Luisa unhooked the chain across the door, then reached for the two bolts on the front door, and drew them back. There was a soft scrape of sound, and then the groan of the hinges as the door opened slightly. Night air, cold and rain sodden, gusted in, spattering moisture on the oak blocks of the floor. The dark shapes of the old trees lay across the oak, and for a moment Michael thought they formed into the outline of a man standing in the doorway. Then it was gone. Luisa closed the door, slid the bolts back, and replaced the security chain.
She’s let him in, thought Michael. She heard him trying to get in, and she’s opened the door to him. There was no one there, but Luisa thought there was, and she thinks she let him. In a minute she’ll go quietly back up to bed.
But Luisa did not. She went to a small bureau in a corner of the hall and from a drawer took what Michael, narrowing his eyes in the uncertain light, saw was a key. Still moving slowly, Luisa went to a section of the panelling, and Michael saw for the first time that a small door was set into the wood: not a concealed or a secret door, simply a door that was so much part of the wood that it was almost unnoticeable. Luisa unlocked it, pushed it open and stepped through.
Michael stared at the dark oblong. He was uncertain what he should do, but perhaps he ought to make sure Luisa was all right before going back to bed.