The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery(29)

The chimes of a small mantel clock broke into his concentration, and he realized with vague surprise that it was two o’clock and that he was hungry. He had told Luisa that he would happily sort out his own lunch, and he closed his notebook and went along to the kitchen. After he had eaten he would ask if there had been any word about the fallen tree. In the meantime, he put together a sandwich which he ate at the kitchen table, his mind still filled with a kaleidoscopic blur of poetry and music and brutality – and of that haunting image of the Palestrina Choir humbly offering its music to the Kaiser’s soldiers.

He washed up his plate and knife, and made a cup of instant coffee, which he took back to the library. There was still no sign of Luisa, and as he drank his coffee, he reread the letter to Sister Clothilde which referred to the Choir being always hidden behind screens. This was an intriguing byway for research, and Michael began to scan the shelves to see what other sources might be on hand. After a prolonged search during which he dispossessed several indignant spiders of their homes, he eventually found a battered volume on baroque choral music. It had been printed in 1910, the cover was dry and split, and the pages were badly foxed and infused with a dry musty scent of age. But halfway through he found a section that read:

In Vivaldi’s day, many young girls were secluded from the world in conventual setting, not because they had a vocation, but so they could be trained to sing. Some embraced this training willingly, but there are many recorded instances of girls being taken from their homes by subterfuge or even force if it was thought they would be valuable additions to religious music. It was also common for wealthy families to pay religious institutions to house girls who were disfigured or mentally flawed, so that their existence need never be known.

Others came from poor backgrounds, where disfiguring diseases were rife – often due to syphilis. For those unfortunates, the convents would have been a sanctuary where they were housed and fed.

For most of their lives, these girls were hidden away. During performances and choral mass they remained behind screens – ostensibly in accordance with the Catholic tenets of preserving virginity and purity, but in reality to hide the disfigurements and, in some cases, the identities.

This practice gradually died out as medical science advanced and attitudes towards cripples and the mentally deficient became more tolerant. However, traces of the tradition lingered in remote districts – in Spain, in France, in Belgium, and also in Italy, although the suggestion of ‘hidden-away choirs’ inside the Vatican cannot be substantiated. There is, however, strong evidence to suggest the practice continued in Europe until as recently as the late 1850s.

Michael read this twice and found it distressing and infuriating in equal measures.

It ought not to be a particular surprise to hear that girls had been hidden away like that – not shamefully or squalidly in asylums or workhouses, but in religious houses which people would have seen as respectable and even admirable.

Had Leonora gone willingly into Sacré-Coeur? The journal gave no clue; it ended with Iskander and Leonora leaving the convent. Michael considered this. How had Iskander’s journal – or what appeared to be part of his journal – reached this house? If Iskander had been here – or if someone had acquired his belongings and brought them here – might there be other pages still to be found? This was a seductive possibility, but Michael was here to research war poets and the influence of music on their poetry, not to chase the lively outpourings of a disreputable Russian war journalist and burglar.

He worked determinedly for two hours, exploring other boxes of papers, reading ancient letters, opening aged books, some of them privately printed by forgotten residents of the house, and sorting the contents of several desk drawers. Most of these yielded nothing more illuminating than old seed catalogues or faded notices of local events, but there were two or three more letters from Chuffy, who had apparently held the Gilmore family in some affection, and had written to his old Charterhouse school friend chronicling events such as a local cricket match in which Chuffy had distinguished himself – ‘I notched up fifty which I thought was a pretty good show’; the wedding of Chuffy’s sister to a local squire – ‘Frightfully good chap, I should think it’ll do pretty well, and a cartload of cousins turned up for the wedding bash’; and details of a number of Old Carthusian get-togethers, which Chuffy, a diligent attendee, described for the edification of his old chum, listing such names as might be thought of interest to Boots.

… and Robert Graves put in an appearance this time, my word, he looked so much older, but I dare say we all look older, what with the war and all, even those of us who were too young to actually serve. Graves came up to me, friendly as you like, really decent chap. We talked about your cousin Stephen, of course. Graves remembered him, in fact had heard one or two of the stories about Stephen, well, I dare say most of us heard one or two of the stories, but I always thought they were all rot, and I said so. Graves said, ‘Ah, really? I’m very glad to have that assurance,’ and shook my hand, and we had a drink together, well, actually, we had several. I don’t mind telling you I should like to have asked him about the Somme, but I thought it better not to, because one never knows if those chaps want to talk about what they did and saw, and I know Graves was shelled. But he and I sat together for the concert, and I noticed how moved he was by some of the pieces the Choir sang. Some Italian stuff, so I believe – Palestrina or some such name. I’d never heard tell of it, but Graves seemed to know it – learned cove he is – and said the Choir had performed it beautifully. He said it was enough to make you want to go off and write screeds of verse in the same rhythm and pattern.